


Dragons Awakened

by Anonymous



Series: Blood of the Dragon [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dragons, Canon Compliant, Dragons, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 16:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 51,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18968749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The dragonlords of Old Valyria were dragonlords in truth, before the Doom.So were the Lords of Dragonstone, before Aegon the Conqueror made them kings.Or: a series of one-shots if the early dragon riders of House Targaryen were the dragons themselves.





	1. Aegon the Conqueror

**Author's Note:**

> dragon rider = dragon. Whether or not those dragons wake the same time as the characters became riders in canon? Eh, yes and no.
> 
> Hopefully to be a prequel series to... something.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Aegon Targaryen, the Conqueror.

The people of Dragonstone, from fishermen to the wealthiest merchants in port, watch the skies on a daily basis, and not just because their Old Dragon flies now only when he feels the rare craving to slaughter his meals for himself. The tithe per sheep is so generous many a shepherd still wish their lord hunts like he used to.

They watch because it is high time Dragonstone to start better living up to its name. Daemion Targaryen was an old man the last time anyone saw him as one, and his dragon shape just grows all the larger and more ponderous by the day.

In brothels and taverns across the island there are betting pools over which dragon shall awaken first. Visenya and Aegon's names contend as the favorites, for one is the eldest and the other the old lord's only son. Little Rhaenys has healthy odds.

Lady Valaena's low chances are not such a jest when one remembers she is half-Targaryen herself. She certainly commands better odds than her husband, Lord Aerion. Drunken sots put down his name as a cruel joke to goad ignorant sailors into doing the same, for any true child of Dragonstone remembers how his last attempt at kindling in inner fire ended.

All the island falls silent beneath Daemion Targaryen's shadow, for their dragonlord's thunderous bellow demands their attention.

Noble to dragonseed, they gape up in amazement. Most eyes water. Some, the old and the faithful, fall to their knees to thank the Fourteen Gods of the Flame.

There is Lord Daemion, old and vast. His scales, once stormy silver, have dulled to stone. Beneath his shadow wheel his heirs, all three dwarfed by his bulk.

The smallest, sleek and silver, must be little Rhaenys. Her siblings are near the other's size, for Visenya is only Aegon's elder by a year. One gleams like burnished bronze, the other like obsidian. There is no way for their people to tell which is which. In the end it matters little, only that the dragons are three.

Lord Daemion bellows once more, a thunderous sound all of Blackwater Rush shall hear. His grandchildren take up his call, high and shrill, and the morning sky once more knows the song of dragons.

* * *

That day Lord Daemion circles the island thrice, and never flies again. Mere weeks later he is found sleeping the long sleep in his cavern, his hide already growing cold.

Lord Daemion dies a dragon, as all true lords and ladies of Dragonstone do. His body is far too vast to move, so the funeral comes to him. Mourners polish his scales and trim his talons a final time, even as others burn incense to ward away the flies and a pungent rot that overpowers oven the Dragonmont's sulfurous stink. A forest's worth of timber is carried in by ship and carried by hand to stack around him. All of Dragonstone come to mourn and pray and weep before his corpse.

His family come last, as is custom. Lord Aerion comes before his sire's body shrouded in fine black silk, his hair a silver curtain. His trappings cannot hide the limp and the tell-tale color of his eyes.

His eyes are a vivid violet, deeper than Lady Valaena's pale periwinkle, for in him the blood of old Valyria runs deep and pure.

Their children had such eyes, until they kindled their inner flames. Now their eyes are dragons' eyes, citrine and obsidian and amber.

After the last rites are made, Aegon as their sire's heir is the first to shrug off his mourning garb and unfurl raven-black wings. His sisters follow a heartbeat later. Already they have grown from the size of children to look a full-grown man. Soon all three shall surpass them forever.

As one they exhale flames of bronze and black and silver-gold upon his funeral pyre. The inferno burns so intensely the human mourners shy away from the sweltering blaze. Even Lord Aerion, after a scowl bordering on snarl, eventually retreats with sweat slicking his face and the tips of his silver hair singed. It consumes the Old Dragon's form in seconds and, after hours, renders even dragonbone ash.

No Targaryen is denied a funeral in flame. The men have their ashes entombed in urns of honor beneath Dragonstone's hallowed halls, amid the fire and earth. Yet their dragons are fire made flesh, sovereigns of the sky.

All of their house, man or dragon, stand vigil until the last embers. Only then do Aegon and his sisters bows their heads, and stand as human children once more, smeared in soot.

Lord Aerion, as his sire's son and heir, his closest human kin, is given the honor of kneeling in Lord Daemion's ashes to scoop his ashes into three ceremonial urns. Each one he solemnly passes into the human hands of his children. He looks not a single one in the eye.

Tradition demands the oldest dragon lead the procession, but all awakened on the same day. So Aegon marches forth from the cavern with Rhaenys at his left and Visenya his right.

Rhaenys is the first to fly, breaking away from her elders at a running start. Flame consumes her and she rises on silver wings, the sealed urn in her talons.

Aegon and Visenya surge after her. They match each other wing-beat for wing-beat, neither able to tear ahead. Black and bronze, so too do they still rival the other in size.

With a roar Aegon is the first to shatter the urn in his claws, freeing their grandfather upon the winds and the gods on high. They commend his spirit into the skies with song and flame.

A dragon, oldest and greatest of them all, is dead. Still do dragons fly.

* * *

Lord Daemion Targaryen ruled for nigh over forty years. His people forever and always hail him as their Old Dragon, near unmatched in age and peaceful prosperity, for he burned all threats that dared threaten their shore and their waters.

Lord Aerion, for all the dragon's blood in his veins, is no dragon. His reign, utterly unremarkable, sees only a decade, scarce enough for his children to grow into themselves.

Some smallfolk whisper to themselves Lord Aerion's health had finally failed him, others that his bitterness had eaten him from the inside out while his son and even his daughters grew as he other could. Others shake their heads and sigh it inevitable that Lord Aerion should only live half a live, for half of himself had never lived.

They are mere mortals, only the fortunate able to suspect themselves dragonseeds. They have no clue how dragons are born. All that matters is that they are not, and Lord Aegon certainly is.

After commending his sire's ashes to internment, one of Lord Aegon's first actions as king is to take both Visenya and Rhaenys to wife.

Propriety always calls for a dragonlord to take a dragon of his blood to wife if possible. Should no sisters have awakened, the eldest should be his bride, as is her due by birthright.

Visenya Targaryen is the oldest child of Lord Aerion. Until Aegon's birth she was his heir. She trained her entire childhood at his side in the arts of war and law and ruling. It is she who wields Dark Sister, while he holds Blackfyre.

Yet Rhaenys is just as much a dragon, if not more so. It is she who prefers sleep in the Dragonmont's sulfurous tunnels, who dances upon the wind and weaves wonders of flame for the sheer joy of it. There is no other dragon in the world, much less of their own blood, to match her.

So Aegon weds them both before the idols of their gods. A bit unorthodox, perhaps, but well within his right as lord and dragonlord.

All of Dragonstone watch with bated breath as Aegon first rises with Visenya in their nuptial flight. Lore and hazy recollection state dragons do not dance gently, but this is no dance at all. It is a war for dominance.

Aegon and Visenya snap after each other's throats and aim for hearts with fiery lances. There are no playful chases around the sea stacks or throaty laughter, only the furious shrieks of two beasts fighting for the upper hand.

Black and bronze, the dragons still near match each other in length. Aegon is far stronger, with thick muscle cording his neck and chest. Visenya is twice as fast and twice as vicious. When the two finally lock wings and talons in a grapple, she's the one spitting sparks into his eyes.

Locked together, they plummet toward the earth, and all of Dragonstone fear their lord and lady would kill themselves before either ever admits defeat.

Mere feet away from the sea, they finally kick away from each other, rising in a spray of steam.

Snapping after tails, the dragons chase each other back toward the Dragonmont. Together, they fall once more, to ferociously claim their wedding rights in skin and scales and skin again. Having long shooed their children inside, diligent parents now plug their ears with wax to deaden the screams and shrieks beneath smoking skies.

Dragonstone expects its lord to at least take a day to sleep off his first wife. Yet no sooner does Visenya finally fall silent does Rhaenys rise. From the volcano Aegon rises as an eager shadow.

For the first time in living memory, dragons dance. At times they chase each other's tails and race the waves as if children again. Others they rise in graceful spirals and nip each other's necks in ways only the fully grown can call... playful. Aegon flies free and joyous, as Dragonstone has never glimpsed him before, despite the bloody gashes from his first sister-wife searing red scars against his obsidian hide.

In culmination, they soar into the clouds. They plummet together, tails entwined and wings holding the other in what might be a final embrace, if they don't break away feet from the ground to rise up and do it all over again. And again, and again, and again.

Dragonstone does not rest easily until the dragons at last retire from the skies and the bridal chambers of the castle echo with far more human passions.

Before the eyes of gods and men alike, the marriages are valid and, Flames willing, blessed enough to refound all Forty Families.

* * *

There are no children, not even after a bout of sickness from a sailing ship at last commends Valaena Velaryon to the pyre.

Dragonstone does not know why. Visenya visits her brother's bed only to secure her place as the senior wife. It is not an honor even a dragon can hold forever, without the promise of an heir, much less a dragon-child.

Aegon does his duties with Visenya. Even the most critical servants know he does not shun her bed when she comes calling. If not from the older sister, than certainly the younger, for it is not obligation alone that brings Aegon to Rhaenys nine times out of ten.

What good are the last three dragons in the world, if they might prove to be the _very_ last?

Aegon's naked ambitions are plain for all to see. He desires a legacy, but not the one that matters. He obsesses over painted tables with no borders where Lord Daemion poured over lineages for brides of dragon blood for Aerion.

Aegon is a dragon because he must be. He takes wing only to go where he pleases and burn all in his way. Where even Visenya prizes a satisfying hunt, Aegon prefers slaughtering sheep and cows in the pen, to conveniently feed his ever-growing bulk.

It is not a sudden love of flight that sends him soaring across the realm to gaze upon the great cities of Oldtown and Lannisport.

When he circles the shores of Blackwater Bay, it is not an aurochs he hunts for.

* * *

Outside the shadow of Harrenhal two kings convey under the banner of parley. One claims domain over the isles and rivers, and the other the entire continent.

Harren Hoare is old and gray, but still a formidable sight in his black armor, his face cruel and cragged as the islands his line hails from. His eyes are dark and hard. His blade has run with the blood of many a rebel river lord, and his crown is iron as his heart.

Aegon Targaryen stands a head taller. His only armor is a shirt of his own black scales, for a dragon needs no more. His crown is Valyrian steel, same as the blade Blackfyre buckled at his side. He could be called a handsome man, if his obsidian eyes do not reveal him as anything but.

Gazing into those midnight eyes, it is no longer quite so hard for Harren to reconcile this pasty pretender with the black dread that circled his towers just that morning. Yet Harren is of the black blood, the seed of the Grey King. His Drowned God has slain the great Nagga, and this dragon is not even borne of the sea. Even a mighty flame is doused by the might of the sea.

Aegon's offer of peace is to confirm Harren as Lord of the Iron Islands, provided he yield his pride and crown. The terms are so generous a blind fool could see through them.

"What is outside my walls is of no concern to me," he sneers at last. "Those walls are strong and thick."

They both know not even a dragon can take Harrenhal by siege. Harren's hall is a work unmatched by any king that has and will ever rule. His line can weather the years like the isle does the storm. Well-stocked supplies not withstanding, there is room aplenty in his yards to _farm_ his own damn food.

"But so high as to keep out dragons," Aegon intones in a voice of iron. "We fly."

_All the better to put an arrow through your eye, you fucking overgrown bat._

But that is too provocative, no matter how flimsy their peace banner is.

"I built in stone," Harren sneers instead. "Stone does not burn. Try my walls until your flame goes out."

Aegon bares his teeth. Even in man-shape, they are far too sharp. "When the sun dies, so shall your line."

His voice rumbles the earth. Harren laughs in the dragon's face as he has laughed at the wrath of the Storm God. "And your skull shall watch the sunrise mounted above my throne."

The King of Isles and Rivers retreats behind his walls. He readies archers and trebuchets. Bonfires are readied along the walls, to turn day to night. His bowmen each fletch their arrows in signature colors, for the won who scores the downs the dragon shall win the riches and daughters of the rebel riverlords.

The King of All Westeros orders his men for the evening attack, to slaughter the remnants of Harren's forces like ravens upon the dying. In private his commanders beseech him to take a bevy of archers astride him, a party to give their lives for him if he's forced to land.

"I am a dragon," Aegon growls at  them, "and I suffer no riders save my sisters."

The dragon-king strides forth from his tent. His Dragonguard press the men back. The black fire that consumes their king claims the entire field. When the flames resolve into their final shape, Aegon's wide wings cast distant Harrenhal in shadow.

Dragons never stop growing. At the end of his life Lord Daemion is said to have been able to have elephants ride down his gullet. Aegon is a young man, full in his prime if not his fire. He devours whole horses, the old and lame garrons pillaged from the front.

It takes an army in itself to fit this shape in armor. The black Valyrian steel is scaled like his hide. Aenar the Exile carried it with him in his family's flight from the Freehold. There is no other material world lightweight enough to adequately protect a dragon's form. Not even Aegon can commission a new suit, for the secrets of forging Valyrian steel died with its smiths and sorcerers.

When the last of the sun sinks above the horizon, Aegon spreads his wings and rises. His dark shape vanishes into the clouds.

Rivermen and ironmen watch the skies. They expect him to fall upon the walls, to rend them open for his army to let them do the dirty work of storming the castle.

Down the dragon dives. He falls upon the tallest tower, where King Harren and his sons reside. His flames, black streaked red, devour them and their defenders in seconds. When Aegon rests his bulk upon what will forever forth be the Kingspyre Tower, the melted stone shifts like molten glass.

Next he falls upon the future Widow's Tower, the Wailing Tower, the Tower of Ghosts and the Tower of Dread.

When the morning dawns, Harren's pride is a misshapen ruin. Harren himself is ashes, indistinguishable from the many, many piles of where once sons and servants and supplies.

* * *

The battle when the Kings of the Rock and the Reach unite is the only occasion the realm shall see its dragon-king and his sister-wives all take to the fire. The line of Garth Greenhand, unbroken for eight thousand years, perishes with King Mern and all his sons and nephews and cousins.

The survivors of the Field of Fire shall always remember the spectacle of an inferno that blazed molten bronze and silver-gold and blood-streaked black. So too will their nightmares echo with the screams and the roar of flames and the smell of so many men and boys cooking alive in their mail.

King Loren Lannister cannot hold in his shaking when he bends the knee before Aegon Targaryen the very day after. He cannot look his new king in the eyes, for in their black, black depths all he can see is death and dragonfire.

Loren the Last shall be the last of his line to ever bear the name, for they cannot bear the shame of his surrender. The accounts of the Field of Fire are never properly appreciated, until the Dance of Dragons creates a terrible new precedent.

Aegon Targaryen looks nothing less than a man when the High Septon anoints him in holy oils. He is garbed in ornate black armor, a wine-red cloak draped over his shoulders. So he is crowned King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men.

With his eyes closed in reverence, none can see the color. The crowd can almost, _almost_ fool themselves into thinking he is the Warrior made flesh, and not the form of fire.

When he accepts, forever and always, the covenant of the Seven Who Are One, for a wild moment his people believe him reborn. If he opens his eyes as the Seven's they shall be the rich violet of his birth, or blue as the noonday sky, for he would have cast aside the heathen Fourteen, the fire and blood. He will be ready to set his sisters aside and take a maiden bride, for dragons can never hope to claim dominion over faithful men and women.

King Aegon Targaryen, first of his name, opens his eyes reborn before the old gods and the new.

They are black as obsidian.

* * *

More than half a decade after Aegon the Conqueror secures his kingdom, there is a son. Dragonstone rejoices their little prince and wider Westeros murmur anxiously, until news of the babe's true condition spreads.

Those expecting an egg or hatchling must be reminded dragons are fire made flesh, and so are born in it. But little Aenys is not a robust boy that promises to one day fly. No. He is small, with spindly legs and a high, reedy cry. His eyes are pale, watery lilac, so unlike the jewel-bright eyes of his alleged parents.

The foolish decry it as obvious proof that Rhaenys has cuckolded her own king with one of the Lysene singers or mummers she so delights in. Even those that remember Aegon's eyes as rich violet doubt a son of his seed would be so pale in color, without a spark to his gaze.

None ever dare say it to their king's face, of course. Rhaenys and Aegon stand over their son as legendary dragons guard their hordes. The queen deigns nurse her son, no matter the delay of trying for her second, for a dragon's child nurses from dragons alone. The smallest shadow of assassins sees Blackfyre drawn or, for the unfortunate that try their luck in open quarters, dragonfire.

When the Silver Queen dies in Dorne with an arrow through her eye, Aenys seems ready to die with her. He will not eat, will not speak, and once more crawls like a babe... or a beast.

With Rhaenys no longer around to defend her lies, a brave courtier dares venture to their grieving king if mayhaps the god are trying to tell them something... and dies screaming in dragonfire.

Dragon-shaped, and larger now than he ever was in the war, the Conqueror calls for his son. The deep, thrumming rumble shakes the bones of servants.

Heedless of the black beast looming in the courtyard or the smoldering corpse that had once been an agent of the Reach, Aenys scrambles to his sire on his hands and knees, his tunic in tatters. His frighten maids cower indoors as their little prince clambers onto the Black Dread's back as he once did his mother's.

For the first time since news of his sister-wife's death, Aegon spreads his wings, and flies to the Dragonmont. His Dragonguard keep back the crowds from ascending it, as their fathers did in the delicate days when Lord Daemion's grandchildren first disappeared from the public eye and emerged reborn. None need much convincing, the Dragonmont smolders as it has not done since before the Conquest.

Aegon returns the next dawning. He briefly plops down the pale white hatchling riding on his back, returns to human shape just long enough to order Visenya temporarily act in his stead, and retreats to the peak once more.

The next week sees a bemused Dragonstone watch the Black Dread teach his pale, ungainly son how to fly. Frantic courtiers that desperately want to argue against his choice of regent soon beat a hasty retreat, when their king orders the little dragon to fly after them instead.

The rumors die at last when the dragons return to Dragonstone. When the black and white fires die, there is Aegon with little Aenys at his side. Once again back on two legs, the prince smiles and babbles excitedly on about flying and fire-breathing to the knight that hastily throws a cloak over his nudity. His eyes are quicksilver.

Aegon returns to his rule. His household are the one left to deal battle with the little dragon prince prone to flying away from his tutors and accidentally setting his chambers on fire.

* * *

When Queen Visenya declares herself expecting a son the following year, the same subjects that openly accept this with nods and prayers for her and her child's well-being veil their inner doubts.

Dragons never stop growing, for they grow until they die. Their life is not measured in centuries or millennium. Just as Aenys continues to grow as a normal boy in his birth form, so does Visenya's frown lines deepen into crags and her hair becomes more silver than silver-gold. Never even having announced a miscarriage before, she is now of an age where even the most fertile mothers have either already fallen barren, or stopped for the sake of their safety. In taverns men jest if she'll try passing off a stone as her egg, or a wyvern for her babe.

Some moons after her announcement, there comes Prince Maegor, hale and hearty and twice the size of his brother at birth. Within a year he goes from nursing his mother's milk to chewing his wooden toys to nubs.

At age three, when Aenys first tripped over his wings, Maegor is granted his first sword and takes to training immediately.

By then it is common knowledge through the realm that all children born of dragons may not necessarily be dragons themselves. Lord Aerion had proved that all too well.

The kingdom prays Aenys the only dragon of his generation, that he will have no brothers to spawn beastly lines of their own. Their prayers intensify when the story of Maegor butchering a cat, however true or not, leaks into their towns and taverns.

When Maegor is eight, the question of his blood is answered by the black dragon found tearing into the throat of the palfrey who had kicked him.

The stable boy who went running at the animal's screams is hauled off to the maester with half his face burned off.

* * *

Aegon the Conqueror has little need of his dragon shape in the last peaceful, prosperous decades of his reign. Only occasionally will the people of King's Landing glimpse the herds of livestock driven in to sate his rare hungers, or fall under his shadow when he flies to bask in the warm of the Dragonmont on a cold winter morning. He devotes half a year to royal progresses in the tours and maintenance of his realm. His hosts must put on brave smiles only when his wings shadow their hall, when he partakes in a feast that requires dozens of sheep, a herd of horses or pen of cattle. The rest of the visit, they need only quarters fit for a king.

Aegon's shadow stops swallowing halls. He eclipses towns.

In his sixtieth year, he makes a progress to Winterfell. Observers note not only how their homes shook with his landing, but the many beatings of his ragged wings to thrust his colossal size into the air. Those who witness know it to be his last, for the next year he sends Aenys and his family out in his stead.

The oldest souls on Dragonstone know their dragon-king in his twilight years. Having passed on the brunt of his human responsibilities, he is free to forsake his human form altogether. Most of his line do, in the end, Aenar and Daenys and Daemion and a dozen others since the Doom. They will hunt as they will, snap at the humans and meddlesome grandchildren who infringe upon their territory, and retire to their quiet caverns in the Dragonmont to dream their last.

Those who wish the Conquerer to prove himself to a dragon to the end are bewildered when sightings of his second form grow even rarer than when travel necessitated it. Their last glimpse of the Black Dread is him lumbering up the Dragonmont without bothering to fly. He lays down, spreads out his black wings to absorb every last drop of sunlight, and _naps._ His snores rumble like thunder, like the towers of Harrenhal when he came down upon them.

The servants of Dragonstone see no shortage of the king. They find him napping in his solar where he once planned and plotted and staring out over the sea in the direction his ancestors fled from. Most often, he has grandchildren on his knee or clambering over his like kittens or swatting at his own stick with wooden swords they call Valyrian blades.

Aegon the Conqueror does not die alone and aloof in a cave, like Lord Daemion. Nor is he Lord Aerion, who withered away on his deathbed cursing the gods and dragons and his own blood.

Aegon has his grandsons, Viserys and Little Egg, at his side. They stare down at the Painted Table, enthralled by his tales of conquest.

When his ominous pause drags into prolonged silence, they turn, bewildered to find him seemingly asleep in his throne. Such is how the Stranger came for him, quick and calm.

Man or not, Aegon still dies a dragon. So does his body go with the flame.

Little Egg, now the only Aegon, has not woken his own dragon in time for the funeral. Rather than leave the honor to his mother, he wades into the ashes himself to carefully collect.

The first goes to Aunt Visenya, who was Aegon's sister-wife, and so has double the claim. The second goes to his father, King Aenys, and then his big sister, Rhaena, who came into her own just two years ago. The fourth goes to Maegor, with a face like stone. He divides the ashes carefully, because there's only so much even a king on a pyre creates.

It is Little Eg-- _Prince Aegon_ who finds Blackfyre first, for not even dragonfire can melt Valyrian steel. His father lets him hold the blade, while he and Aunt Visenya lead the procession onward into the sky. Holding Blackfyre is a paltry prize in comparison, where even Rhaena gets to rise on her own wings to give their grandfather to the gods on high.

He'll rise like that soon. Aegon vows it.


	2. The Bronze Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Visenya Targaryen, the Bronze Queen.

Visenya is the only one who knows their grandfather as the lord he was. She is just old enough to remember sitting on his lap and gazing up into his face.  
  
The hands that hold her have curled claws and dark webbing between the lower joints of the fingers, though they are so careful they never even prick her dress. His hard, craggy face has scales creeping at the edges. His smile reveals too-sharp teeth. At the gums they're black, the dragonbone bleeding through.  
  
"Visenya," he murmurs to her. "Little dragon. You'll follow me, one day."  
  
"When?" she demands.  
  
Father has been trying to follow her grandfather for ages, far longer than she's ever been alive. He's tried so hard to stoke up his inner fire all he's done is burn it out. His face is dull and drawn, and his violet eyes empty in a way Mother's and Aegon's and baby Rhaenys' are not.  
  
Her grandfather kisses her brow. His breath is hot as the hearth and stinks like sulfur. "Soon, little dragon. You'll have your wings, and your flame, and you shall rise up beside me."  
  
His pale silver eyes like the thunderbolt before the storm cloud. Usually his gaze is far away, toward a horizon Visenya cannot yet hope to reach. Now, however, her grandfather's soul pierces her own and sees something in her no other can. She shivers.  
  
"But--"  
  
"Soon." Her grandfather's voice is iron. "Do not be like your fool of a father, to force a flame before it is ready." His lip curls in a snarl. "If there's even a spark at all to burn."  
  
Beneath Visenya his muscles coil like a tiger about to pounce. She leaps from his lap before he springs up from his throne. Down the hall he stalks. Knowing the storm about to break, she follows at his heels.  
  
First off is the steel of Valyrian steel that once marked Aenar the Exile a Lord Freeholder. Off come his cloak, his jerkin, his boots. Terrified servants scatter in his shadow. The ones that dare approach him are thrown aside with broken bones and ragged gashes.  
  
One old woman snags Visenya by the shoulder. She rounds on the crone who dares hold back a dragon, the future Lady of Dragonstone. Her fury dies at the look in the old woman's eye.  
  
"You can't follow him, my lady," she murmurs to her. "Lord Daemion takes to the flame."  
  
Dragons are flame. Her grandfather is first one and then the other, man and dragon, shifting as he wills. He's done so since he was her age, younger even.  
  
Her grandfather always shifts in fire. This transformation lights up the windows like silver-bright noon. Visenya races to the closest one. The pane she grabs shakes in its frame at her grandfather's roar. When he spreads his wings, the shadow blots out the sun.  
  
One day she'll be that big, and then bigger still.

* * *

Grandfather never gives his family a proper goodbye. There's no need for one. Lord Daemion Targaryen still lives. His people first spot him on a daily basis, as he circles the Dragonmont and basks in the sun, when he swoops down from the docks to take his tithe from the fishermen. He's always had a taste for fish.  
  
Father is Regent of Dragonstone. He meters out justice in Lord Daemion's stead, while his father enjoys a well-deserved retirement. No one has to worry him flying off like his father did. Aerion Targaryen can't fly at all.  
  
Grandfather's chambers are kept fastidiously clean, though his silken sheets are never slept in. His place at supper goes empty. Aerion rests uneasily in his seat, as if he must rise at any moment to make room for the true dragonlord.  
  
There are no more stories about first flights and glories won, no more grumbling about Essosi and their hideous trading deals, no more sitting in laps or whiskered kisses on the brow.  
  
Visenya's not supposed to visit her grandfather anymore. The Dragonguard that keep the peasants away from the Dragonmont make no exceptions for their future lady, dragon's blood or no.  
  
She does so anyway. She knows the passages and secret corners best of all her siblings, because she's the oldest and the future lady, Aegon or no. No matter how many servants are ordered to spy on her, she just has to make it far enough up the cliff, and even they won't dare disturb her and her grandfather.  
  
He's still the same as always, even if it's the shape that gives Visenya rides on her nameday instead of hugs and stories. She rests between his horns as easily as she does upon his lap. He doesn't talk much anymore, so Visenya fills the silence for him, proudly going on over the new things she has learned about ruling Dragonstone or ranting about Aegon's shortcomings in swordplay and Rhaenys' inability to shut up.  
  
Even forever a dragon, her grandfather listens. He knows her better than Aegon, than Rhaenys, than even Mother.  
  
"I'll be like you, one day, lord grandfather," Visenya promises. She has to hurry, because she hears Mother coming up the slope to take her away. Father certainly won't come collect her. "I was born to be a dragon like I'll be Lady of Dragonstone, even if Aegon has to be there too."  
  
Her grandfather gazes down with eyes big as she is. Gently, oh so gently, he nudges her out to Mother's side.

* * *

The fire in her blood bubbles warm as summer, sweet as pain. Visenya bares her teeth in triumph when the flame claims her, and is reborn.  
  
Her grandfather thrums. She closes her eyes to bask in his pride as the sound reverberates through her. She has dreamed this day for as long as she has remembered. Now she dreams it true.  
If only Aegon and Rhaenys are not there to leach upon her triumph.  
  
It's not fair. Visenya is firstborn. She was sole heir to dragon's blood and Dragonstone long before Aegon stole her claim away by virtue of the meat between his legs. Couldn't the gods not give her this, if she must forever share her throne and name and children with Aegon?  
  
Little Rhaenys takes to the sky like a duck to water. She willingly throws herself into the blue, where their grandfather moves forward to push Visenya and Aegon from the precipice.  
  
When Visenya gathers the courage to fly at last, before their grandfather can force it on her, Aegon spreads his black wings in the same heartbeat. Aegon is tall, matching her height where she towers over all the other boys his age. So too does his size rival hers as dragons. Even his flame, black veined with red, burns bright as hers.  
  
Visenya's blood boils all the hotter. Her roar is a shadow of her grandfather's, but it's stronger than her siblings', and carries across the island.

* * *

There's a time and place for silk sheets. It's not when Visenya is still so young, so restless and her fires so bright. Even her grand chambers are stifling, her bedposts kindling rather than things of comfort. She needs freedom to fly at a moment's thought, freedom from walls and window panes.

In the early days Aegon and Rhaenys take to curling together in the garden and atop towers as they did in the nursery and in sneaking into each other's rooms.

Even then Visenya can't stand joining them. She endures Aegon in swordplay and at their father's side when they learn rule and law, just as she must endure Rhaenys as she learns sums and womanly arts and how to command a household as a lord does his domain. The deep depths of the Dragonmont warm her bones as only fire now does. In the caves there is calm, quiet, a scent of smoke and sulfur now sweet as that of burning flesh. There are no maids to shoo her out of bed or tutors that dare the dragon's domain.

As a little girl Visenya had learned how to bribe her way past her grandfather's guards, as those that denied her suffered her kicks and cruelty and condemnations that had them removed from their post. Grandfather, pleased at her boldness, sometimes let her curl up in the bed where only rulers of Dragonstone slept. More often than not he shooed her back to her own bed.

As dragons Lord Daemion is no more indulgent. Occasionally he will let Visenya slumber at the lip of the cavern he claimed as his own. Rhaenys and Aegon go nowhere near it, save when their grandfather's rumble summons them for instruction. Rarer still he'll rumble for her to nestle at his side or tuck her beneath his wing. Old and slow and cranky, his snarls and sparks will drive even her away.

Dragons are not beasts to be chained, especially when they are young and rapid in their growth. Mother allows Visenya to spend days in her scales, in those early days when learning flight and flame come beyond all else. Yet as weeks go by she bids her eldest home by night, to wake up in her own bed and learn as a lady before she flies free.

It's late afternoon when their lessons are done for the day. Rhaenys and Aegon immediately steal away to race around the island. Visenya diligently flies off to visit their grandfather. He spends so much time sleeping, nowadays. What time he's awake is spent snarling and spitting flame at those that disturb his solitude. She hopes he's in a rare mood to tolerate her. Visenya is the only blood he'll accept near him anymore.

Ordinarily Lord Daemion's cave smokes from his breath or the bones of a fresh kill will litter the entrance. Visenya sees none. Even her sharp eyes glimpse only his massive form curled deep in the depths of the cave. The air that should rumble with his snores or warning growl is silent, even before it smells of death.

She's old enough to understand, but she is a dragon, and dragons deny what they cannot. So she calls out anyway, as she always does to test if Lord Daemion's in a welcoming mood. She takes the silence as acceptance and steals inside.

Her little body, even in scales, should find Grandfather's cave oppressively hot from his inner inferno. Inside there is only the distant warmth innate to the Dragonmont.

She nudges her grandfather's side, cold as cinders.

Visenya shrieks, high and shrill. She stumbles from her grandfather's tomb into the open air.

Dragons do not weep. Her shuddering gasps are something like sobs.

Aegon and Rhaenys frantically flutter to her sides, to converge on whatever has wounded her. Visenya barrels past them. All of Dragonstone teems with alarm. Visenya falls through the chaos and into her mother's arms.

Dragons do not weep, but tears flow hot as flame down a little girl's cheeks.

* * *

"Dragonstone's _not his."_

"Little dragon." Rage fuels a dragon's flame. Valaena Targaryen's voice remains smooth as the summer sea. "Your father is Lord Daemion's only son and heir. Dragonstone and all its domains are his birthright."

Visenya's lost count of how many times they've argued over this. It doesn't matter. She's a _dragon._ She'll burn her way through her mother's stubbornness eventually. " _Dragon_ stone is mine! Mine, and Aegon's. _We're_ dragons, _we're_ the ones Grandfather was proud of, _we're_ the heirs he's always wanted."

Her mother's eyes darken. "Visenya--"

_"HE'S NO DRAGON!"_

Mother shrinks back a bit at her bellow, but Visenya doesn't care.

"He's not, Mother! He _never was and never will be!_ He hates Grandfather for it like he hates us. He'd spit on our pyres too!"

Because she _saw._ Oh gods, did she see. Father thinks himself so cunning, bending close to breathe a prayer over Grandfather's body like that, and spitting because he'll never manage a single spark of his own.

The air around Visenya is blistering hot, but that's all. She's no monster, to let the flame take her with Mother so close. Grandfather taught her better than that. Mother is the blood of the dragon too. She doesn't shy away, not even from heat strong enough to burn a lesser mortal.

Mother wraps her arms around Visenya. She lets herself be held. Dragons do not weep. The furious tears staining Mother's gown, where no one can see, are a little girl's poor substitute for flame.

Later, in a voice almost too hoarse for words, she whispers, "Why couldn't you have been born a dragon too? You deserve it more than Father ever did."

Mother pulls away just enough for Visenya to see her smirk. "Little dragon, what makes you say I am _not_? I have made three of you, after all."

* * *

Father at least has the dignity to die when Aegon is a young man fully grown, at an age where no one would dare insist upon a regent. Lord Aerion Targaryen, broken and bitter and burned out before his time, was only a placeholder between the true dragons.

Even by mere human standards, Father has never been the picture of good health. Those weeks he weren't chained to his sickbed or drugged from the pain of his burns he wasted on yet more ill-fated attempts to wake a dragon that never existed. Dragonstone is not surprised to see their sickly lord carried off by a mundane chill.

Visenya does not lower herself by playing the grieving daughter at the funeral. She does not give a flying fuck if her haughtiness fuels whispers of poison and sorcery. Dragons do not concern themselves with the bleating of sheep. They're all too fond of their own woolly hides to dare accuse her directly.

Aegon's stoicism, enigmatic as ever, is interpreted as solemnness by the mourners. Of course no suspicion goes toward Rhaenys, ever sweet and skilled in affecting the proper mood. Certainly no one side-eyes poor Lady Valaena, the dutiful and loving wife, silver hair bound and figure draped in mourning black.

The rumors never do specify how Visenya learned how to mix purported poisons or weave supposed spells.

Nor do they ever ask how Rhaenys, a dragon, became so skilled at playing utterly harmless.

Father is no dragon. Visenya spares him only the smallest sparks. His ashes are interred beneath Dragonstone, to gather dust for all eternity where his sire's spirit flies free upon the wind.

After, Visenya spares Father not the smallest thought, for it is now Aegon who rules in truth.

His first decree as Lord of Dragonstone affirms Visenya as his sister-wife, rightful Lady of Dragonstone.

His second decrees Rhaenys his second wife.

He weds them both that very day. Visenya, Dark Sister at her side, stands at Aegon's right. She is the elder sister, the firstborn. She is the first wife, the true Lady of Dragonstone, unless Rhaenys manages to not only birth an heir, but a true dragon, before her.

Rhaenys, on Aegon's left, clasps his hand as if holding onto half her soul. Visenya holds Aegon's as if she's still the big sister, ordered to mind her little brother. Her fingers curl into claws, shredding into delicate human flesh. Stoic as ever, Aegon squeezes right back.

It has been over a lifetime since Dragonstone has seen the dragons dance. Lord Daemion's wife had been human, so she had symbolically flown upon him on dragonback, before riding him once more in the bridal bed. Neither Aerion nor Valaena had been dragons at all.

Hours later, when every part of her being aches and her brother's seed has gone cold within her even as he flies off after Rhaenys, Visenya examines the bloodied wounds marring his obsidian hide and her tender human flesh. In time they will heal as scars, cutting through even scales. Some she calls marks of passion and other badges of honor. After all, she is eldest, the firstborn dragon of her age. How could Aegon claim his place as dragon-lord without first conquering the competition?

The scars are heaviest on Aegon's neck, right next to his jugular, where she had tried to rip out his throat.

In human form Visenya never foregoes long sleeves, in either steel or silks. They hide the scars on her arms where she wrenched Aegon's claws free, where he had tried to crush her in their mating dive and make their nuptial flight a tragic accident.

Orys Baratheon must know the truth. He and Aegon share secrets as they might never fully share blood.

Mother, though she has not glimpsed a single stretch of their marriage flights, knows them all the moment they limp home. But her children are now her lord and ladies, true dragons where she has only a claim to the blood, and so remains silent.

* * *

Valaena Targaryen, born Velaryon, should have lived over one hundred years. She should have cradled grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She should have an entire line of dragons, one for all of the ancient Forty Families, bow down to her as their matriarch.

Dragons have no reason to fear human sickness, even the worst plagues that fester in the depths of the foulest ships. Their very blood is fire and burns out the most persistent disease.

Even in chambers so thick with the stench of sickness her human senses gag upon it, Visenya has no reason to fear. She snarls at the healers and herbalists who can do nothing more, scattering them from the room, and curls up closer to the woman on her deathbed. Valaena, shivering from a cold she will never shake, nestles against her daughter and all the burning heat her human body can bring into the room.

Visenya inwardly rages against the damned sailors and their fucking rats, the fucking healers, and the two little siblings she keeps away with snarls and Dark Sister. Most of all she hates the fucking mother who refuses to rage against her death like a dragon should. "You can survive this," she hisses. "You _must_ survive this, with only the right price--"

Mother tries to laugh and only manages a long, rattling cough. Visenya holds her firm through it. "Darling dragon, that is a price I paid, and paid, and paid. I have nothing left to offer."

"You needed only pay it _twice."_

"She wasn't planned, darling dragon, but never unloved." Mother bares her teeth in a snarl, when she bites back another cough ripping her apart from the inside out. "I'm sorry."

_For not letting your magics die with you?_

"Rhaenys is my little sister, Mother," Visenya tells her flatly. "No matter what. I still love her, just as I still... love Aegon. Even if they make it so very, _very_ difficult. Us dragons must stick together, after all."

"I'm sorry for _you,_ Visenya." Mother squeezes her hand in a vice grip. "There is only so much you can request, before the cost grows too high. For you I thought only of seeing a new dragon born, of a babe that would one day know skin and scales, word and wing. I thought it was enough."

It had been, for Valaena. For old Lord Daemion Targaryen, who had wished only for a healthy grandchild, for the dragons to not die with him.

Never, ever for Father, who had craved a son to be all he would never.

"It _was_ enough," Visenya assures. "More than enough. I'm still Lady of Dragonstone, Mother, with a pure dragonlord to ensure our flame shall burn bright for a thousand generations more."

Mother wearily opens her eyes. Sunk deep into their sockets and glazed over, they are still a rich violet; the exact same color of Visenya's own used to be, before her inner fire had forever burned them molten bronze.

Already, she and Aegon and Rhaenys had ruled for several years.

Several years, and two sister-wives, without a single missed moon blood between them.

"You taught me all you needed to. Your line, _our_ line, is secure. Forever and always."

Mother's eyes flutter. "All, except self-restraint. As if a dragon could ever learn."

The fury burns too strong. Instinctively Visenya rolls away toward the balcony. The flames eat up the door and the sky beyond, but not the precious person within. Her roar splits the air like thunder and her hide shines like a horde of copper coins. Still decades away from her grandfather's size, she already catches whole castles in her shadow.

The simple lap of Dragonstone hasn't worked since she was _ten._ Visenya is halfway to the Blackwater Rush before fear sets in and prematurely douses her wrath. Frantically she clips and flaps back home with all her might.

Rhaenys' mourning cry, high and shrill, pierces the air like shattered glass.

Valaena Targaryen, born Velaryon, dies as she wishes; in the air, astride a dragon, even if Aegon must carry her in his arms and Rhaenys' grief nearly sends them all careening down to the bay below.

Visenya is too late. She always is.

* * *

Valaena Targaryen is not only mother to dragons, but of the blood herself. Though a Velaryon by birth, her funeral receives twice the attendance and grief of Lord Aerion's, for Lady Valaena has truly been loved by her people.

Visenya, as the eldest child, is granted the honor of collecting the ashes from the pyre. Her mother she be entombed for eternity alongside her husband, in the catacombs beneath Dragonstone.

One handful, Visenya steals away into pocket.

Some part of Velaena Targaryen, no matter how small, has been and will forever be a dragon. That is the part Visenya sets free upon the winds, a secret known to only the two of them.

* * *

Dragonstone might be the last surviving piece of the Valyrian Freehold, their westernmost outpost, but neither its history nor the Dragonmont's nurturing warmth change its landscape. There are only so many sheep and goats and ponies the rugged pastures will graze. There is only so much fish a dragon can scoop from the sea, or tribute from the equally small fiefs of Claw Isle and Driftmark.

Such a domain had been enough to satisfy the Old Dragon, for Daemion had been but one dragon, old and tired. Then, so soon after his grandchildren had fledged, he had died, leaving behind three scrawny children that altogether could not match their predecessor's colossal appetite.

But Aegon and his sisters are children no longer. They are grown dragons, restless in their close proximity and lack of prey and expanse. How can Visenya and Rhaenys ever hope to bear little dragons of their own when they are always at each other's throats?

Visenya's instincts demand a manageable domain. The fractured fiefs in Crackclaw Point and along the Blackwater Bay are a perfect place to start.

Unfortunately for her, Aegon's own require a whole damned continent. He refuses to think of little dragonlords, dragon- _princes,_ until he has conquered Seven Kingdoms for them.

Beneath the shadow of dragons the paltry houses of the Blackwater Rush are swift to fold. Upon this stepping stone Visenya crowns her brother king, whilst Rhaenys proclaims him king of not only the Blackwater Bay, but all Westeros. After all, dragons answer to neither gods nor men, only to themselves.

As queen, mother to a future king yet unborn, Visenya hangs back whilst good, loyal Lord Daemon Velaryon sails against the great fleet of Gulltown. When her cousin goes down with a third of his fleet, Visenya can take the reserves no more. At her call her loyal ships hasten out of range, before her copper flames set the Arryn fleet alight. The crackling wood and screams of the dying are her song, a dragon's song.

Dragons do not thrive on ash alone. From above the moors and valleys of Crackclaw Point look pitifully small. It is impossible all answer to their own petty lord, until she counts how many come to swear fealty to her, and her alone. Visenya keeps the clawmen as her own, until her son shall have the need for a united domain. Visenya basks in their fearful reverence as she did in the pyres off Gulltown.

Only once must she share her victory, when she and Aegon and Rhaenys come together in a display of devastation unseen since the Freehold. How thoughtful of Loren Lannister, to have his armies burn out in the open upon the Field of Fire alongside House Gardener's than stay safe in Casterly Rock, a holdfast not even ten dragons could dare.

Visenya endures her siblings only long enough to see Torhenn Stark bend the knee than follow his other kings into the flames. The arrows that pricked her sensitive wing membranes are flesh wounds at her size. She is quick to fly again, this time for the east.

Sharra Arryn has assembled a host to grind all others down to dust; the garrisons at the Bloody Gate, Stone, Snow, and Sky could bog down even King Mern Gardener's impressive host, were most of their vanguard not ash.

Visenya is almost impressed by the falcon queen's defiance, to go down with the same fleet she's already witnessed razed, to fight where kings burned and buckled. Yet her pride bridles at rendering the Vale's proudest, highest keep rubble. It is so easy for a dragon her size to take a castle of even the Eyrie's size.

 _Holding_ it, and all the Vale, is another challenge entirely.

How fortunate Sharra has a walking, talking weakness.

* * *

Sharra Arryn was not born to the Falcon Throne, nor to them. Yet it is she who has held the throne firm since her husband's untimely demise, where male cousins tried to assert their rule over little Ronnel's and shove her aside for the regency.

No mere woman could have held a boy king's domain. Playing the lords off of each other through smiles and chivalry had ensured they all fought in her honor and stabbed each other in the back when one grew too powerful. Taking so many of their children and grandchildren as 'playmates' for her boys has ensured their compliance.

The threat of dragons had brought all the disparate factions gathering beneath her wings. In comparison to the fertile fields of the Reach and riverlands, ripe for the taking, her mountainous realm had seemed so small in comparison. Why would even the Black Dread go after her kingdom, when so busy digesting the others.

Sharra has built herself, her _sons,_ up on her strength. It is why she gathers the soldiers up herself at the Bloody Gate, than hide away in her hall as Harren had done.

Mayhaps she had pushed too far, in offering herself as a dragon's bride and Ronnel a dragon's heir. Implying herself as equal to Aegon's dragon-queens is one matter. Trumpeting their barrenness, _Aegon the Conqueror's_ barrenness, is, in hindsight, mayhaps the gravest error of all.

Sharra does not realize how dire her arrogance until Visenya's shadow passes over head. The Bronze Queen sails right over Sharra, too swift and high for any arrow or trebuchet to reach, right over any chance of repeating the Field of Fire.

She flies for the Eyrie.

Sharra's heart drops to her stomach. Ronnel and Jonos, her babes, are there with the majority of their armies confined to the mountain passes.

Sharra surges up the Giant's Lance as if she had wings herself, even as she knows herself and her men far too late. None can outrace a dragon.

The Flower of the Vale is a disheveled mess held together by chained rage and desperation by the time she makes it up the path. She regains a sliver of self-control at the sight of her home, unburnt and still standing. The men-at-arms uneasily surround her, for the standing orders of their king and fear for his life stay their blades and bows.

There is no dragon in the courtyard. Ronnel perches on the lap of a silver-haired woman armored in scales of bronze. Even with a vicious blade strapped to her side, despite eyes of molten copper, she is beautiful. Beautiful as a blade, beautiful as flame. Ronnel, bewitched, cannot tear his eyes away from stories of flight, of how small even the Eyrie looks from way up high.

Queen Visenya stares past Sharra's son, and right at Sharra herself. Her smile of too-sharp teeth is a heartbeat from her little king's throat. "Ah, your grace. Here is your mother now."

Ronnel turns to blink guilelessly up at her. "Mother, can I go flying with the dragon lady?"

Sharra manages a tight smile, keeping her tone even as possible. One cannot cower before a predator and expect to walk out alive. "Perhaps later, sweetling." Her gaze, like ice, falls upon the dragon-queen, as if they are equals, and one is not a heartbeat away from burning the other to a crisp. "Queen Visenya, to what do I owe the honor of your visit?"

"My brother was so generous with his terms of surrender," she says, sweet as poisoned honey. "I hoped making the offer once more in person would better catch your ear." Visenya bares her teeth down in at Ronnel in what can never be called a smile. "After all, as queens we are devoted to not only our families, but our whole realm. What kind of queens would we be if we allowed our people, our children, to perish so needlessly?"

"But I'm the king," Ronnel whines. "Like Father was. Don't I get to say what we do?"

"Queen Sharra is your mother, your grace," Visenya reprimands him gently. "Even little kings and lords must listen to their mothers."

"What's the difference? King or lord, the Eyrie and all the Vale are still mine, aren't they?"

"Of course, little king. And you'll never have to to fear another king taking it all away from you. Beneath the dragons, everyone has to get along."

Ronnel turns his biggest, bluest eyes upon her. "Mother, can't we _please_ surrender now? So I can go flying?"

Visenya is gracious enough to allow Ronnel his ride first, perhaps because it is easier on her pride to carry a king than a lord. Sharra herds her son to the edge of the garden, slowly and in plain sight, before bronze flames light up the world and monstrous wings blot out the sun. Their men twitch with decades of repressed training and instinct. Sharra bites back a grimace. Ronnel laughs in delight.

The Bronze Queen kneels low, her belly scraping the floor, so that men might lash rope and leather to her back in a safe harness for their king. Visenya does not bare the slightest hint of fang when Ronnel is next hoisted onto her back and secured.

The Eyrie's defenders are still and silent as mice. One smile, one stifled snigger, is all that stands between them and dragonfire.

Visenya flies three times around the Eyrie. Ronnel's whoops are near silenced by her thunderous wing-beats. Sharra prays to each one of the Seven thrice over before the Bronze Queen lands. Once Ronnel is safely lifted from her back, she shreds the make-shift harness. In the fire of her transformation the scraps are rendered ash.

So does Ronnel Arryn became the first Lord of the Eyrie and Warden of the East. Still buzzing with excitement over his flight, he never once thinks of the crown lost until years after.

In public Ronnel is hailed as the King Who Flew. Jests among his later friends, who call him the Bronze Bitch's rider, are silenced with a harshness otherwise unlike him.

Even long after Visenya is dead, and the shadow cast by her name grows smaller by the year, Ronnel is still called the King Who Flew. His final flight took him from the Moon Door down to the valley below, for House Arryn's sigil has only ever been symbolic.

* * *

Visenya needs only one look, to confirm what she has known for moons now.

"Bastard," she hisses, low and guttural.

It matters not which Lysene singer or mummer Rhaenys fucked to beget her little rat. All that matters is who his father is so very clearly not.

Rhaenys bares her teeth in what cannot be called a smile. "Watch yourself, sister."

"I _know,"_ Visenya snarls.

Over a decade now, they've been wed to their brother. There should have been a child years ago. If not from Visenya, then from Rhaenys, that Aegon has mounted time and time again. A miscarriage, a stillbirth, a misborn, _something._

With only one bride, the answer should not have been so obvious. But with two, both dragons themselves, and so devoted to seeing their line continue?

Dragonstone might not have dared speak the words, but other kingdoms were not so tactful. The Hightowers offering up a daughter to secure a seat in power was one thing. Had Argilac the Arrogant ever expected a dragon-born grandson, when he had a male cousin groomed for the lordship? Sharra Arryn had been rudest of all, offering herself as bride and her firstborn as Aegon's heir.

It is unbecoming of a dragon to wed those not of the blood.

It is devastating to have a dragon, much less a dragon-king, be as barren as the doomed lands of Old Valyria.

"He is my son," Rhaenys declares. "Our blood. _Aegon's_ blood. _Dragon's blood."_

"Bastard." Visenya spits sparks. They fizzle on the stone floor. "Blood betrayer."

Rhaenys growls. It rumbles deep in an even a human chest. The bastard at her breast is too busy suckling to even whimper at the sound.

Dragonstone has stood since the days of the Freehold. Visenya will not be the one to bring it down. It would be no proper fight at all, with Rhaenys clinging to her abomination to rather than transform and hold her own.

There is only one way to maintain order, without their dynasty crumbling before their hard-won realm. It is to Aegon Visenya stalks, her king and her brother. No matter the vain hope in his heart, even he must have known the truth upon laying eyes upon their sister's get.

Even when the snarls of their king and queen drive their attendants away, there is no guarantee of privacy in these halls. They resort to High Valyrian. To a mere human it is the best approximation to a dragon's tongue. Only in a dragon's throat, for even in this form they are still so different, do the words reverberate as they should.

 _"You know what must be done!"_ Visenya hisses.

There is one solution now. The last thing their dynasty needs is a whore queen to tarnish their blood, their legacy. Best the bastard succumb to its sickness before the rumors fly. Visenya knows a dozen poisons that can ease her nephew's passage with the maesters being none the wiser, secret weapons the dragonlords of the Freehold hoarded most jealously from their rivals.

In his chambers there is no room for wings, so Aegon throws his broad shoulders out instead. _"My blood, my son, my heir. The dragons shall not die with us. Our bloodline lives on."_

_"Not **our** blood!"_

_"Do not hate our sister for not having your self-destructive pride."_

Visenya makes a sound somewhere between snort and snarl. _" **My** pride? Have you forgotten the people you shackled us to, those that loathe your crown as the old slaves did our ancestors? And now you'd leave them to some base-born whelp as pathetic as our father was!"_

Aegon's human form is scarcely taller than hers. She loathes him all the more when he uses every last inch to stare her down, for in their true forms they are the other's match. Blackfyre and Dark Sister meet in a clash of steel, with more sparks than either of them can manage in such tight quarters. _"Rhaenys' son is my own. **My** heir. What befalls that babe, I shall bring down upon you a thousand-fold."_

Visenya's gaze flicks to the window. She should push him out and follow on her own wings, to remind him of the true meaning of fire and blood. She is the true Lady of Dragonstone, the true queen of this land. Their bloodline must continue through her, or not at all. It is well within her right to tear out Rhaenys' throat for her treachery, to burn her babe alive and show him no more than human. She'd kill Aegon too, if there were another in this world capable of matching him.

Dragonstone knows the old ways. Westeros has never been Valyria's. Should she show them her true face, claim her true rights, then they shall come for her like the knights from the old ballads those Andals so revere.

 _"I need do nothing, brother,"_ she calmly retorts as she sheathes Dark Sister. _"Blood will out."_

* * *

Prince Aenys Targaryen, the bastard is christened, for Aegon wants the whole fucking world to know how highly he honors the whelp's mother. So long as he and Rhaenys continue to insist the bastard their true-born son, so must Visenya. In these times dragons stand together, or not at all. At least she need not hide her obvious distaste for the child.

Aenys grows from a sickly babe into a scrawny whelp always eager to please his nursemaids and toddle after his mother instead of a dragon. Dragonstone's damp air and wet winters are merciless to a babe without fire in his heart. Every sickness promises to be his last. Visenya is torn between annoyance and relief every time he pulls through. Best the bastard die before his parents grow too fond of him. Best he lives until a true-born heir is born to take their rightful place in their hearts.

Such a child will never come from Rhaenys, not when the serpents of Hellholt put a bolt through her eye. Her death throes take the tallest tower and curtain wall, but not the castle itself. Lord Uller survives to hang her skull above his hall and armor himself in her scales, until his princess at last puts a stop to it.

Visenya know what must come next, but her fury burns too fierce. For nigh over a year she rarely takes human form, for the assassins are all to eager to try putting a dagger through a human's back than through a dragon's eye. Her rage and her grief, she pours out upon Dorne.

She and Aegon find common cause over its ashes. Together they take keeps and raze entire towns. Between burnings they couple in the air and in ashes, seized by feelings they can pretend are passion. While Dorne suffers without ever buckling, her and her brother enjoy their most fruitful moons of marriage.

After nearly two years, the Dragon's Wrath upon Dorne dies down with both dragons sailing home from a captured port. It is rumored at least one, particularly Aegon himself, is too exhausted or ill or injured to fly.

None are right. Most are too thick to put the pieces together until Visenya announces herself expecting a son some weeks later.

Dragons need not concern themselves with the bleating of sheep. Visenya cares not for the rumors she's faking a pregnancy or deluded her body into thinking she is. She knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, she carries a son, a true-born prince, a _dragon._ Even Aegon's quiet refusal to believe the child truly his cannot dampen her pride.

Visenya knows damn well it is Aegon's son she carries because she damn well knows the price she paid for him.

She has given the gods twenty years to bless their union. She has prayed and waited and endured with endless patience. She has tried the salves and potions and charms the old healers of home forced upon her. Yet dragons answer to neither gods nor men. It is Visenya, and Visenya alone, that has forged her heir from her blood and Aegon's seed. What does it matter if he shall be the only child she shall ever bear? Aegon certainly can't give any on his own, and their son is already destined to be born perfect. All he cost was Visenya's last few, fleeting years of fertility.

Visenya spends her pregnancy in seclusion on Dragonstone. Aside from her swollen stomach and an odd craving for bloody meat she has always preferred well-cooked, the babe grants her no trouble. Her stomach is too tough to be disturbed by morning nausea, her dragonbone ribs too thick to be hurt by his strong, impatient kicks and punches.

Her isolation provides Visenya a welcome respite from the lords and ladies that fawn to her face and whisper treason behind her back. All she needs are the humble dragonseed of Dragonstone, who are born and bred to know their place, and a reason for her dragon form to not be seen by the wider realm.

Even when the babe is a heavy, kicking pain around her midsection and her tits swollen and aching, Visenya can still transform. If she wishes to. All it would cost was the life of her son, her only babe, who would be consumed by her flames and left without her womb even if he survived the fire.

Dragonstone diligently keeps up appearances. The smallfolk believe the Dragonmont smokes every time she slumbers in her cave, though the Dragonguard keep them even further from the volcano than custom. Herds of sheep are still slaughtered, their remains discretely dealt with.

The first weeks are not so difficult. Visenya has weathered such waits before, in all the many times she has tried and fail for a child to naturally take root. As the weeks drag into moons, and the babe grows all the more restless, so does she. Her eye wanders to the clouds drifting past her window, or the flames crackling in the hearth, and she _wants._ The dragon form has been hers since childhood. Only now does she realize how she has taken its freedoms for granted.

When Maegor is born squalling and already twice the size of his cousin, Visenya retains control enough to suckle her son. He is a dragon, after all, and only a dragon worthy of nursing him.

Finally, her babe has his fill. Visenya shunts him into the arms of her maid, bronze eyes fixated instead on the open doors of her balcony.

She drags herself from the birthing bed on her hands and knees, raw and bloody between her legs. The maids flock upon her, thinking she has fallen from weakness or mania. Most leap back at her warning snarl. One, slow and fat, squeals like a pig when her claws catch her on the face.

The balcony, sculpted by Valyrian masters long dead, takes even an older dragon's weight. Visenya throws herself into the air with a triumphant roar.

Not since girlhood has she flown for the sake of flying, racing the waves and kissing the clouds. She delights in the dying bleats of her prey and the delicious crackle of their burning flesh and gorges herself upon charred lamb.

None are fool enough to approach her in this state. The flock's shepherd hangs far back. He can collect those bones as proof for the dragon-tithe when she is damn well done with them.

Hours later, it is Maegor's hungry cries that lure her back. She suckles him into slumber, and takes to the wing again.

Dragon she remains, until her son has need of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visenya's story does not end here, but her later life is heavily entwined with those of dragons that came after.
> 
> Given the shady circumstances of Aenys' and Maegor's births in canon, and the fact that one of them was obviously supernatural in conception, I feel that Aegon the Conqueror was infertile. 
> 
> The price for Maegor, a dragon through and through? Visenya thinks it was just her own fertility, a price she happily paid because it was crap at her age anyway, and Aegon certainly didn't have any on his own. Of course, maybe Visenya should have listened to her mother a little better when she said sorcery can't give you everything without the cost to match...


	3. The Silver Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Rhaenys Targaryen, the Silver Queen.

Rhaenys, only a girl of three, knows so much about the world already. Visenya _(not_ Senya) will never love her like Aegon will, but playing tricks on her is so much more funner. Aegon barely flinches when she sneaks spiders into his bed or trips him up during their dance practices. Visenya bellows in rage and turns red as an apple. Grandfather loves her in a distant way, not like Mother can, because he is a dragon and spends most of his time sleeping in his cave.

She doesn't _love_ Orys or even like him all that much. In her opinion, he hogs way too much of Aegon's time, but at least he does all the dumb boy stuff with him that bores Rhaeny to tears. So she tolerates him, for being the brother she can't be.

Mother and Aegon and Grandfather all love her. Even Visenya does, Mother promises, deep down and in her own way.

Father does not. Not at all.

Young, and as fearlessly curious as only a girl of three can be, Rhaenys asks him, "Father, why don't you like me?" _Hate_ is too strong a word for polite conversation, Mother cautions. She must choose her words smartly, like a true lady should.

Father's scars twist when he sneers. It's almost enough to make him look scary. But Rhaenys is the blood of the dragon, and dragons don't get scared over silly things like that. "You're another mouth to feed. I'll have to pay even Velaryon or Celtigar to get you out of my house."

The day after, when she asks again, he spits, "You should have been a son. At least all your sister's missing is a cock."

Then, on the third day, he snarls, "Because you should not have been fucking born at all! I have to wed you off to somebody and sell out our blood even further, because the gods didn't have the grace to kill you in your cradle!"

When Rhaenys can take no more, she runs to the one person she knows will make her feel better. She holds in her tears until she's safe and sound with Aegon, in the secret corner only they and Orys know about, because dragon's don't cry and because Orys is smart enough to go running when Aegon tells him to.

Mothe would just try to make this into another one of her lessons. Aegon, however, waits until she stops hiccuping into his chest to plainly tell her, "Father hates Visenya too, but me most of all."

"B-But _why_?"

"We're all dragons, Rhae, and he's not. Not in the way that counts."

Rhaenys frowns. Visenya swears Grandfather used to look like a man too, whenever he wanted, before his scales became too comfortable. Perhaps that's why Father was so furious, when she asked him where his scales were last week.

"But I don't _feel_ like a dragon, Egg! I'm not fierce, like how you and Visenya are. Dragons should be fierce."

Aegon's violet eyes, a pretty shade almost like her own, burn into her. Rhaenys shivers, before he presses a burning kiss to her forehead.

"You're just as much a dragon as I am, Rhae. Even more so."

Rhaenys believes him, because Aegon never lies.

* * *

Aegon tells the truth. Where he and Visenya scream their pain and their joy, Rhaenys laughs as the flames consumed her and is reborn anew. She is the first to spread her wings, the first to fly, who embraces their birthright the earliest.

Rhaenys makes an even prettier dragon than she does a lady. Her neck curves like a swan's and her stubby horns are already pale as moonlight. She is slender and graceful, where her siblings are bulky and ungainly. Her scales shine like silver coins. She can't wait until she sheds enough to make into armor like Grandfather used to wear, or maybe a whole skirt or gown!

When Grandfather finally bullies Aegon and Visenya into shifting back, Rhaenys does too, because she's not a baby getting left behind.

She almost cries, but blinks back her tears in time. She is a daughter of Valyria, and the blood of the dragon don't cry like spoiled babies. Visenya still sneers at her sniffle, so Rhaenys kicks her.

When at last she can drag Aegon back to the privacy of her room, the tears threaten to spill once more when she gets a good look in the mirror.

Together their eyes used to be like Father's, a purple deep as indigo. It's the one feature Rhaenys likes about him. Now her eyes are yellow like a cat's. Aegon's eyes are darker than even Orys', whose eyes are at least dark purple. Aegon's are _black._

"Oh, Egg," she sighs. "Your eyes."

Aegon stares at his reflection. He cracks their small, secret smile. "I like them."

She pouts. "They were such a pretty shade of purple, like Father's."

"Exactly," her brother spits. "Before we looked like Father. Now, we look like ourselves. Like dragons."

Rhaenys sticks out her tongue and considers this. Finally, she nods. "Citrine," she declares. "My eyes are citrine. And yours are... onyx."

Aegon takes her hand. Rhaenys beams and squeezes back.

They're prettier than Visenya, now, as dragons and Valyrians both. Their eyes are gemstones. Visenya's new eyes can only be called ugly, ugly bronze.

* * *

Perhaps, had a fire never awoken in Rhaenys, she would have indeed been wed to a Celtigar or Velaryon to refresh their lines with dragon blood and ensure suitable brides for her nephews. Maybe she would have even been wed to Orys, if Father had deigned to keep the bloodline pure as possible.

But Rhaenys is a dragon, and neither Daemon Velaryon nor Orys Baratheon are her equal. There is only her Aegon, forever and always.

When Father at last has the decency to die, Aegon weds Visenya first only because she is the firstborn. She is Dark Sister's wielder and Grandfather's old favorite. It is her birthright and Mother expects it of them. Aegon's face is respectably stern, his onyx eyes dull. Only for Rhaenys do they light up with all their love and passion, when he too takes her to wife. He is the last male dragon in the world, and the only fitting father of her brood.

Before they can consummate their love, first comes the agony of Visenya's mating flight. Rhaenys nearly throws herself into the skies, when she sees Visenya go for a killing bite, but she clenches her fists until they bleed. She will not shame her brother, by being the jealous little sister leaping to his defense.

She half-wishes, and half-hates herself for thinking it, that Aegon should have just done themselves the trouble of a little 'accident.' But he does not, and so Rhaenys remains a lesser wife, the sweet sister who licks at his bloody wounds and does her best to make themselves forget Visenya's dark shadow over them.

The smallfolk soon take to whispering that Aegon only visits Visenya once, for every ten times he takes Rhaenys. And they are right. Visenya claims her rights only enough to keep her scent on his scales, to try every once and a while for the dragon son that will forever secure her rights as first wife. It is Rhaenys he craves, Rhaenys who does her damnedest to purge their sister from their scent and their memory.

When Aegon claims all the Seven Kingdoms as his right, it is Rhaenys he trusts as his royal voice, who proclaims him First of His Name and King of All Westeros. It is Rhaenys he entrusts with Orys Baratheon's life, when they are ordered to march to Storm's End and claim recompense for the slights Argilac Durrandon has thrown at them.

There are those who mutter, most especially those new to the dragon's rule, that no woman should be on the battlefield, even if she's half a beast. Of course, Rhaenys is not a woman much at all. She is not Visenya, who feels the need to strut about in dragonscale and bark orders with Dark Sister strapped to her back.

No. Rhaenys is a dragon on the battlefield, unless the need comes to report troop movements or accept a formal surrender. Then she can sleep under the stars and fear no assassins, no stinging words. She has no need for a sword when she has fire, armor when she has wings and scales. The commanders who hiss words about beast queens clam up mighty queen when her baleful eye falls upon them. And piss themselves when she pulls back her black dragonbone teeth to smile at them.

After the Field of Fire, when her flames burn so beautifully beside Aegon's own, the snickers stop. The Silver Queen is hailed as a power in her own right.

Swollen with pride, and larger by the day, Rhaenys flies to claim her own kingdom as Visenya so artfully captured the Vale. She laughs at all the spearmen crammed into the Prince's Pass, for even when she's high above the range of ballistae they're still caught in her shadow.

She flies to Vaith and rumbles in bewilderment when the castle deserted, only the old and the women and children left in the town outside. She circles from above, but the scent of men is stale, and she can spot no guerilla forces hidden in the hills. At night her men are harried regardless, by traps and pitfalls and arrows in the dark. She snarls and spits flame, but kill her own soldiers more than she does the Dornishmen.

Such is the same for Godsgrace, and the Planky Town.

By the time they reach Sunspear Rhaenys is almost too furious to assume human form, even when the gods damned Yellow Toad requests a parley. She swallows her fury as best she can. Her silver-blonde hair cannot quite disguise the pale scales creeping at her hairline, the black dragonbone peaking through white enamel.

Princess Meria Martell, fat and hideous, sits in her throne-room alone and defiant. The Silver Queen's blood boils as she looms a little larger, curls fingers webbed with growing wings.

"Aegon is Shield of His People," she entreats, sweet as she can with fangs lisping her speech. "Those beneath his shadow need never fear a foe again, but those who fight dragons shall know our fire."

The Yellow Toad stares back with eyes near dark as Aegon's. "I will not fight you, nor will I kneel to you. Dorne has no king, be it man or dragon. Tell your brother that."

"Oh, I shall," hisses the Silver Queen. "But we will come again, Princess, and the next time we shall come with fire and blood."

"Your words. Ours are _Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken._ You may burn us, my lady..." She smiles, grim and toothless. "But you will not bend us, break us, or make us bow. This is Dorne. You are not wanted here. Return at your peril."

With a thoughtful frown at the ceiling, Rhaenys concedes it is much too short for her current height. She settles for extending her arms, with a cape of dragonscale between them, to cast Meria Martell in her shadow. "Funny you remember your Andal blood so fervently you forget the fate of your _other_ ancestors against my own."

"Do _you_ forget, my lady? Are the ghosts skulking beneath the Chroyane your blood, or mine?"

Rhaenys bites back her fury with one last graceful smile.

The next time she sees this fat bitch, she'll be burning like a candle.

But not yet.

* * *

There can be no further conquests, not when the kingdom they already have is still very much without an heir, though not for lack of trying. Visenya, who has not hunted Aegon so avidly since the early moons after Mother died, comes to him every time her moon's blood arrives. She hungers so much for a child that Rhaenys backs off, just the slightest bit. She would love a daughter of her own, to wed to Visenya's son, or even the other way around. But that can yet wait a year or two.

So Rhaenys contents herself with other pleasures. Court always provides a lovely opportunity to show off her gowns and wear her hair loose, to set so many new fashion trends among the ladies of the realm. Her balls know music and merriment, and her feasts poets that lift her to laughter or swoon in sadness. There are so many towns, for a dragon to fly to. There are so many ways for a dragon to dance, be they in the ballroom or spinning in aerial acrobatics her courtiers can only gasp in jealous awe at.

When the nights grow long and lonely, she surrounds herself in her favorites, her silver-tongued poets and her sweetest singers. Some are sun-haired westermen and others dark, hairy stormlanders. A dragon is allowed her playthings, after all. It was a right her father always claimed, and he was no true dragon at all.

Her paramours are discrete, as she would expect of a dragonseed back home, and discarded quickly. Out of boredom and spoiled for choice, she keeps no man or boy for more than a few weeks at a time. The ones prone to jealousy or ambition or telling tales do not live long to do so. They are small men, performers with no great names. Men like them must go missing all the time, or slip away in the dead of night to follow their heart's next whim.

Rhaenys fears no bastards from them. So long as she is free in her shifting than not even Aegon's seed can take root. Her dragon body is much too hostile for a child, and all dragons are flesh before they are ever fire.

As the moons crawl pass, it becomes painfully obvious no heir at all is forthcoming from Visenya. Perhaps she is too old and bitter to catch a child. Perhaps no spark can take light when she and Aegon have only hatred to fling between them.

So Rhaenys puts aside her wings and her playthings. She and Aegon try, atop towers and their secret caves and corners of Dragonstone. They try again and again. And again.

With a creeping dread, Rhaenys realizes she is a young woman no more. She grows older by the day, and bitter Visenya older still. They and Aegon are the last dragons in the world, with not a single misborn or miscarriage yet to show for it.

Rhaenys prays to the Maid and Mother, the ugly face in the weirwood and to the gods of her mothers. When no such miracle manifests, Rhaenys refuses to drift off in bliss one night. Not even sex can appease her, when her inner dragon is screaming for release, to throw her wings open and burn whatever might be growing within.

"Aegon," she murmurs, so that his onyx eyes flutter open. "I cannot lie to you, and so I cannot hold this back." Her husband blinks back, slow and patient. "Visenya and I are trying for children. Any child. So, so hard. What... what if the problem does not lie with us?"

Aegon's eyes close. He slumps in resignation beneath her, as she has only long confirmed what he himself has suspected. "Argella Durrandon. Sharra Arryn. That Hightower girl. How could I take any of them, when I could not even give my own damn sisters a child?"

"It should be Orys," she whispers. "I wish it could be Orys, if it couldn't be you." She snarls into the dark. "If if weren't for his _gods damned hair."_

If only their Father's taste for mistresses had not run so exotic. If only Orys had not been his only bastard of note.

Aegon sighs regretfully, for he perhaps only loves Orys a bit less than her. "It's a risk we can't afford. There are still plenty of dragonseeds out there. They're our blood at the very least, if not our uncles and brothers."

Rhaenys hisses her disappointment into his chest. "Uncle Daemon would have been best."

If only Daemon Velaryon, half Targaryen on his mother's side, had not sunk years ago with the fleet at Gulltown. At least his wife was a Celtigar, and not such a great dilution of the blood.

"Cousin Aethan, then?" Aegon presses.

She snorts. "How many babes has he put into that Massey wife of his now? I'm not having that cock in me."

"That seems like a point in his favor, Rhae."

"Uncle Daemon had more than one son, Egg." She purses her lips. "Why not the one who loves you so, who wed himself to the blade so he needn't take a wife?"

"Cousin Corlys?" Aegon's brow furrows. "I recall little of him."

Rhaenys titters. "Oh, Visenya and I scared him off. Even before we ever found our wings, we honed in our competition." All except Orys, of course. "That doesn't stop him from mooning over you from afar."

Her brother thrums thoughtfully beneath her. After a lifetime, he inclines his head once, before kissing her brow.

Rhaenys ponders in his embrace. It sits easier in her heart, to know any child of his would have no bastard siblings out there unbecoming of the blood. Corlys loves Aegon, though his passion cannot certainly match a dragon's. It helps, too.

When she can take the tenderness in this downy bed no longer, she nips her husband on the shoulder, and races for the balcony. With a horny growl he follows.

Black and citrine flames light up the night, as the dragons claim their marriage rights.

In the morning, without changing shape once, they fly for Driftmark to pay their kin a long overdue visit.

* * *

Rhaenys does not think she could ever love anyone more than Aegon, even the little thing that kicks against her ribs and keeps her from the skies, until the pain recedes and a thin, squalling bundle is passed into her arms. First she fears a shiver of fear, that Corlys Velaryon was a poor choice after all, for her babe is over a moon too early. But, oh, her son is warm and her arms and so very, very _loud._ Tears of pride pool, but she does not shed them. Even in joy, dragons do not weep.

Aegon settles at her side, thrumming so deep with contentment he shakes the whole bed. "Aenys," he declares. "Aenys Targaryen. My son, my blood, my heir."

Rhaenys basks in his love and fears nothing. Visenya snarls and rages about her son, but even she submits when Aegon bares his fangs and lays down his ultimatum. The maesters murmur the babe has come to soon, that perhaps she hopes too soon for too soon, but she and her brother do not abide their bleating.

Aenys is the blood of the dragon, the son of the Silver Queen. Of course Rhaenys, and Rhaenys alone, nurses him. She has no need about to conceiving another babe when she has the small, perfect one before her. So long as she is there, and she always is at her son's smallest mewl, he need not weaken himself with the milk of a human nursemaid. He blood is fire, and she nourishes him on smoke and flame.

With love and patience, Aenys grows. It does not matter how slowly he does so in the beginning. Long after his human form reaches full height, his dragon shape shall grow and grow, until he swallows whole islands in his shadow. What pinches her mouth is when Aenys' eyes come in lilac, far paler than the violet shades Rhaenys remembers of herself and Aegon, and his silver-blond hair grows into curly ringlets.

Yet, while Visenya seethes from the shadows, none dare point out how little Aenys seems Aegon's son. They only praise his singing, his dancing, how clearly he speaks for a little boy his age. When he can be forced from behind her skirts or her wings, that is.

Dragons come in all colors, and Rhaenys knows her son to be one too. When he is still in swaddling clothes, she orders her nursemaids to strap him to her chest. Beneath the Silver Queen's baleful eye, they do, with leather and murmured prayers. Yet though her dragon body shimmers with heat Aenys does not whine in protest. He only coos, and nestles closer to her warmth. When she soars, she cranes her head to smile down at him. Aenys, staring at the Blackwater Bay with wide eyes, only looks up at her fond rumble to send her a gummy smile.

When her boy is older still, Rhaenys loosens the bindings somewhat, so that her babe might laugh and throw out his arms, as if he is the one soaring. She loves giving her maids heart attacks over it, and the Conqueror certainly can't around with his heir strapped to his chest like a peasant woman. How else will their boy know the sky, and all that he is?

Rhaenys cherishes her son, but she is a dragon, and even dragon mothers grow restless. For every one of Aenys' little milestones, there is a new raven back from the front, as the Dornish murder another lord in his bed or slaughter a garrison.

It is time for her return, with fire and blood.

"Your grace," begs her maids and the council and all but her family. "Please, we beg you to reconsider. Think of your son, and the succession."

Rhaenys smiles her dragonbone smile. "My lords, how can I secure anything from my son while Dorne hemorrhages and good men die by the dozens every day? There will be tie enough for a whole brood when the Toad and all her cronies are ash."

The last night before her departure, she spends alone with Aenys, curled atop the Stone Drum with her babe nestled securely beneath her wing. All his well, until he awakes screaming from his nightmare. He's had so many, since news leaked out of her leaving him like Aegon already has.

Gently, Rhaenys nudges him awake. He clings to her side, shivering, as she leaks the tears from his cheeks.

"Mama," he bawls. "Mama, don't go!"

She rumbles tenderly, but sternly. _Little dragon, I must. Oh, how I must._

Aenys understands only his tone, so he babbles on, "I had the dream again, Mama! You fell and fell and you _wouldn't get up!"_

The Silver Queen heaves a sigh. She nudges her babe away, so the flames won't take him when she transforms. The moment she's a woman again he flies back to her arms. "Little dragon, you are a son of Old Valyria, the blood of the dragon. And dragons do not cry."

Aenys sniffles contrarily, but wipes his snot upon his sleeve. "I'm not a dragon, Mama. Not like you and Papa and Auntie."

"Well, my love, I had a dream too. Do you know what I saw?" Aenys shakes his head. "I saw _you_ , little dragon, soaring high and proud as a dragon should." She winks at him. "Who knows, maybe you'll find your wings while I'm away and surprise me when I come back."

It would be exceptionally early, for a boy of almost three, to find his fire so soon, but Aenys is no mere dragon. He is her son, and the Conqueror's heir.

Aenys juts out his chin to give her his very best impression of Aegon's determined stare. "I'll try, Mama. I promise."

Rhaenys presses a kiss to her babe's brow, in those last tender hours before dawn.

When she sets sail, her heart aches with bittersweet pride. Aenys waves at her from the docks, lip trembling, but does not cry.

* * *

Rhaenys Targaryen dies in Dorne, above Hellholt, with a scorpion pierced through her eye. With a high, final shriek she crashes to earth, taking the tallest tower and part but the curtain wall, but regrettably not Lord Uller, with her. She dies a conqueror, a queen, a dragon. For the dragonlords of Valyria, there is no higher honor.

"Looks like that makes me a dragonslayer, boys!" Lord Uller is reported to yell to his cheering garrison, before he mounts the Silver Queen's skull above his seat. Her hide he makes into gloves and boots and a whole suit of scale mail. Even some of his own men shudder and refuse such gifts for themselves. The leather of these gloves was once human flesh, and the shimmering silver paints them as clear targets to her wrathful siblings.

For two years, the Dragon's Wrath devastates Dorne on a scale not seen since Garin the Great warred against Valyria. Five Lord Ullers die, be it by dagger or dragonfire. Hellholt is said to be cursed by the Silver Queen's wrathful shade, and that all who touch her scales are fated to drop dead, burnt from the inside out.

Part of the peace accords with Aegon sees every last bit of Queen Rhaenys returned, to be burnt upon a pyre of dragonfire so that her wrathful spirit might at last ascend to the skies and stop harrowing the physical world. It becomes a death sentence to possess a relic of the Silver Queen, and forgers are punished harshly. The last surviving child of that first Lord Uller, a daughter, yields her seat to a distant cousin so that the taint will not follow Hellholt further.

Such is the legacy of Rhaenys, one built of ash and all the blood spilled in her name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I headcanon Daemon Velaryon was Valaena's full-blooded brother, and there half a Targaryen himself on his mother's side. Therefore his kids, including the first Corlys said to be devoted to Aegon, are a quarter Targaryen themselves.
> 
> Orys Baratheon looks strikingly like Aegon, coloring aside. He gets his black hair from his mother, but his eyes aren't black - just a dark shade of purple.


	4. The Wyrmking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Aenys Targaryen, the Wyrmking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My longest chapter yet, for one of the shortest-lived kings in the dynasty. This is where that 'Canon Compliant' becomes a bit more creative license, seeing as characters actually being dragons results in the broad strokes being the same, but also some parts of Fire and Blood should just be burned. So...

Aenys is a good little boy, his nursemaids agree. He is shy and sweet and only wants to make them happy. They hear him sniffling to himself at night and find tears staining his pillows, because he's trying to be a brave little dragon-prince with the king and queen both away at war. His nursemaids coo to themselves and to their best to grant him hugs and sweets without him suspecting anything. He's still their prince, after all, and they certainly can't let him know his sorrow is no secret.

It is a day like any other. Aenys is singing in his high, sweet voice a hymn to the Mother, for singing always quiets him so, when his lilac eyes near bulge out of his head. The nursemaids do not understand what's happening until he collapses to the ground, screaming and sobbing and ripping at his clothing.

"Mama!" he cries, over and over again. "Mama, mama, mama!"

His maids scream for the maester, who comes running. His frantic thought is that the prince, always of a delicate constitution, is having a fit, so he orders the castle staff to hold him firm while he keeps the boy from swallowing from swallowing his own tongue. When Aenys quiets somewhat, he forces sweetsleep down his throat, and bundles off him to bed.

While septas and ladies pray over the prince's sickbed, the maester wearily warns them fits are terrible things, especially in one so young. Even if Aenys awakes again, he may not be the boy they remember.

When Aenys' eyes flutter open, he is most definitely the same little boy. He is not a boy at all, anymore. He does not speak, but to keen in the back of his throat, and growl when he is forced back into bed or off his hands and knees. Slow to walk and speak to begin with, Aenys forgets both. He crawls, like a babe. Like a beast. He will not eat. What water and broth he gets must be forced down his throat. He bites and scratches his caretakers, when they simply try to keep him alive.

The day he takes off the maester's fingertip, the raven reaches Dragonstone with news of the Silver Queen's death. Rhaenys died the day the prince fell into this state.

"Oh, the poor thing," most of the staff sigh. They are dragonseeds, who know their lords feel beyond the realms of mere men. "The prince loved Queen Rhaenys so."

Others, new to the realm and new to the island, mutter darkly among themselves. With the queen died the prince's humanity. He maintains a boy shape, but is all beast. There is no one left to trample down the old rumors of Rhaenys' mummers and singers, not with the most fervent dragon supporters guarding Aegon and Visenya in Dorne.

By the time the shadow of the Conqueror is sighted on the horizon, things have come to a head. Already Aegon knows of his supposed son's condition, which has only deteriorated further from when the raven was sent.

When Aegon lands in the castle courtyard, one courtier can keep his silence no longer. He is a reacherman who has long stewed over Aegon's refusal to marry the Hightower maid, and now bears fresh scars across his arms and hands from wrangling his spawn of incest, if the beastly boy is indeed not truly a bastard born out of wedlock.

Before his king can even resume human form, the crownlander licks his lips and tries, "My lord, the boy is no better. We pray over his bedside night and day, and the Seven will not heed us. Mayhaps, their silence is answer enough to sug-"

The Conqueror's head snaps toward him. There is just enough warning for the experienced servants to drag the unwary out of the way, before he unleashes a plume of black fire. Eyes guiltily slide away, and weak-kneed servants race back into the castle's halls, as the reacherman screams, high and shrill, as he burns. Then Aegon's obsidian eyes sweep over his hall.

With the defiance stamped out, he snorts in satisfaction, and then thrums deep in his chest. The Black Dread's call shakes the bones of servants, almost seems to move the castle's very foundation. It is the same call Rhaenys once used to summon their son.

Expectant silence falls over Dragonstone, as its dragon-king cocks his head to listen to sounds far beyond human hearing.

Aenys clambers into the courtyard on his hands and knees. The nursemaids chasing after him pale beneath Aegon's stony stare and scurry back inside. Fearless of the shadow that has given the children of whole kingdoms nightmares, Aenys babbles excitedly to his sire, clambering up onto his snout to better reach his eye level. The Black Dread listens to utter with the patience of the Father, before he nods once.

For the first time in days, Aenys stands properly, but only to scrabble onto the Black Dread's back as he once climbed upon Rhaenys'. Servants bite their lips hard enough to bleed as Aegon unfurls his wings. Without chains to safely weigh the little prince down, surely the sheer force of the take-off should throw him from his father's back and kill him in the fall.

But Aenys does not fall. He clings to the Conqueror's back like a squirrel, as they fly to the Dragonmont and out of sight.

The volcano smokes that night. The folk of the island, the true people, pray in their homes to Valyrian gods no longer acknowledged in public.

The dawning brings a definitive answer to the prince's paternity, if the white wisp of a hatchling frolicking in the Conqueror's wake is taken into consideration.

* * *

Aenys cocks his head and preens at his own reflection. He makes a very handsome dragon. His long, slender snout is like Mama's. His scales are pale like the moon, like Mama's horns, but his eyes and his wings are silver like her scales were.

"Again, Aenys."

He's tired, but this is Papa asking this of him, so Aenys closes his eyes and concentrates. Flames like moonlight wash over him, taking his wings and tail with him. Human again, he picks up the mirror on the cavern floor with his own two hands. Even up close, his eyes definitely aren't pale purple anymore.

"Shouldn't my eyes change back too, Papa?"

Papa chuckles, deep and strong as the Dragonmont. "No, little dragon. That is their true color."

Aenys beams. His new eyes are silver like Mama's scales. It's almost like having a little part of her back.

Life will never be the same without Mama, but parts of it get easier now that her dream of him being a dragon has come true. Aenys is strong now. He doesn't get sick anymore and doesn't get tired so quick after supper. Things come easier to him. The maester praises him for better remembering his sums and the septa for having such a strong voice when he recites his prayers. Even the master-at-arms stops scowling at him so much, and he is a man Aenys once feared he could never please.

There is more than that to look forward to. Aenys isn't allowed to be a dragon indoors. He tries his hardest to obey, but in the beginning he still accidentally singes his clothes whenever he sneezes and accidentally transforms if he gets too fearful or excited. It happens most at the end lessons, when he gets breaks to fly around the Dragonmont and time to experiment with rolling his tongue to get a longer, brighter jet of flame. Even that improves over time, and makes Father proud.

Some months after he gains his wings, Aenys gets a little brother too. His name is Maegor, but Aenys doesn't get to see him much. He's still just a babe, too little to be a real friend, and Aunt Visenya is somehow scarier as a mother than she was as just an aunt. She loves Maegor just as fiercely as Mama loved Aenys, and he doesn't want to get between them. That sort of bond is special.

When Papa deems Aenys capable, they fly together for the court at King's Landing. As the king's heir he has to remain at his side, to learn all a dragon-prince must. When Papa-- _Father,_ he's a big dragon now--can't train him, there's yet another maester and all the Kingsguard to help.

Aenys likes Uncle Corlys the best. He's patient and he actually knows how to crack a joke, when most his brothers look ready to pound Aenys into the dust if he wasn't their future king. So Aenys grits his teeth, climbs up from where Ser Robin Darklyn has hit him to the ground, and parries his next blow with all his strength. And grins at the knight's surprised laugh. Just because he's lean like Mama was doesn't mean he's not a _dragon._

Then, one day, before Aenys can start sparring Father calls him to the side. His black eyes shine with pride, when he draws his blade forth to present it to him. "I believe, my son, you have earned the right for your first practice with Blackfyre."

Aenys only barely keeps from sputtering when the pride of their house is passed into his hands. Blackfyre is Valyrian steel, the only other material aside from dragonscale that survives the shift from man to dragon and back again. "F-Father, I'm humbled by your faith in me, but I can't be worthy of such an honor yet."

"Oh, really?" Aegon turns to his Kingsguard. "What say you, Ser Griffith?"

The knight pulls a face. "Prince Aenys' strength more than makes up for his adequate swordplay, your grace... even if his arms do that."

Aenys throws back his head and laughs. "I'll have you know, Ser Griffith, these arms are wings half the time. I receive more exercise I do in the air than I ever do in the yard."

"Then perhaps it is time to change that," Father intones, before thrusting Blackfyre into his hands.

Aenys swallows thickly. He knows damn well he's adequate in an area Maegor, so much younger than him, already excels at. Even if his brother never flies on his own wings he'll be a swordsman worthy of legend. But Dark Sister is Aunt Visenya's, and Maegor's inheritance. Aenys is the firstborn, the future king, the eldest if not the only dragon of his generation. Blackfyre will be _his_ one day, and his alone.

It takes no time at all, to adjust to Blackfyre's weight in his hands. The blade is perfectly balanced, like an extension of himself. He wonders what it will be like to transform with it, to incorporate the blade into his being when transformed and its strength into himself.

Aenys is three and ten that day, sore to the bone and soaring with pride by its end.

The day after, Maegor transforms into a black dragon for the very first time, and tears into the palfrey that kicked him in the head.

Aenys is proud for his little brother, truly. Perhaps, now that Maegor will no longer seethe in jealousy over not having wings of his own, they can finally bond as brothers should. He can show his little brother the best thermals for whipping around Dragonstone, the best hunting grounds out in the kingswood.

Perhaps it is a new beginning for them both.

It is not, but Aenys will never give up hope for that day.

* * *

Some of Aenys' earliest memories are of all the young ladies sent to become his 'friends,' the lords that pull him aside just to tell him how pretty and pious their little girls are. He remembers being polite to them, and stressed if he's being _too_ nice, because Father and the Kingsguard and all his tutors had warned him not to be too nice. Even the dragonlords of Valyria couldn't marry everyone and now their family follows the Faith of the Seven. Aenys shall take one bride, and one bride alone.

Long before the betrothal is formally announced, Aenys knows who he's destined to marry. Without a sister or first cousin, he has to fall back onto more distant Velaryon kin. He is a dragon. The more diluted the blood of his bride, the slimmer his chance of siring dragons.

Despite her Massey mother, Alyssa has the violet eyes and silver-blonde hair that prove the blood runs true in her. Aenys has always found her one of the easiest people he gets along with. She is kind and charming even to the smallfolk, because she too understands the need to make everyone around her feel the slightest bit more at ease. Most of all, Aenys appreciates her wit. They spend hours discussing the movement of the stars and the secrets of the natural world. Aenys even loves their spirited debates on the merits of astronomy, because she challenges her debates without plowing right over him.

Most of all, they discuss the Faith. They are each the first generation of their families to be born christened to the new gods alone, with any formal connection to the ancestral deities of Valyria. They debate on where the Faith should rule and the old traditions still hold sway. The incestuous marriages of the dragonlords kept the dragons alive, though those lords took far too many liberties with their people. Aenys still calls many smallfolk on Dragonstone bastard kin.

When they are both fifteen they are wed in the Conqueror's Sept on Dragonstone. A pious septon from the riverlands weds them, and Aenys sweeps the first red dragon cloak over her shoulders. Before the Conquest House Targaryen had been no true noble lineage, and had kept no sigils. Though the crowd is kept small, for Dragonstone and the small sept can only support so many lordly visitors at once, the ceremony is orthodox. No references are made to the old gods. He and Alyssa are merely second cousins, far from taboo by any Westerosi standard.

Hand and hand, they walk down the aisle. When they step out into the sunlight they leave orthodoxy behind.

The Kingsguard and the Dragonguard close ranks, raising their shields to press the crowds back. Even Alyssa retreats, so that he might have the room to transform.

With one last reassuring smile to his audience, Aenys lets the fire take him. His finery burns to ash. Majestically he unfurls his quicksilver wings, to cheers and applause. His scales are mainly white, and this regarded as a sign from the Seven, for white is all the hues of the rainbow come together. Aenys might be a dragon, but he is the first of the Faith and the Faith alone.

Alyssa mounts him gracefully and Aenys only shifts a little awkwardly with her weight. He has never flown a true passenger before, for Maegor had not been the sort of little brother for rides. Still, they have both practiced in private. A slip from Alyssa could result in her fatal fall. One wrong twist on Aenys' part can have them both falling to their deaths, for only recently has Father deemed him strong enough to carry an adult rider.

Brides of the dragon need no harnesses. Alyssa straddles his back with only the thick leathers concealed beneath her skirt as protection. Her legs clench his sides with ungodly pressure.

Slow and steady as he can, Aenys rises. He roars grandly for the crowd below, because Alyssa is clinging too fearfully to wave down at them and his flames might singe her.

Aenys makes one full circuit of the island, flying low enough for all the smallfolk to wave up at him and his bride. Lord Daemion Targaryen had last flown this path with his wife, for she had no wings of her own. When above the Conqueror's Sept he veers for the Dragonmont, particularly one of the smaller caves he knows won't reek like any of his family.

Pale as a sheet, Alyssa slides from his back when he nudges for her to do so. She makes it two steps before plopping to the ground, laughing deliriously. Nude as his first name day, save for the circlet of Valyrian steel in his hair, Aenys cautiously kneels beside her.

"Alyssa?" he tries. "How do you feel?"

"Like I'm about to reunite with last night's supper, cousin," she tells him breathlessly. Then she bends over to retch.

Helplessly he rubs her back with one hand. "Didn't you break your fast this morning?"

"And bless this island by vomiting upon them from dragonback?" Alyssa huffs, as if they're children once more. By Andal law they still are.

"I did the same," Aenys admits. "Mostly because I was practically sewed into that doublet. And now it's ash."

They look each other in the eye. The absurdity of the day hits them both and they both kneel on the cavern floor, laughing.

Then Alyssa stands to shuck off what remains of her gown. It takes much more time and swearing on both their parts to get her out of the form-fitting leathers beneath it.

Dragons need no bloody sheets to wave as proof of their marriage. Their consummations are proven by nuptial flights for all eyes to see, and passionate screams of unions beneath stone and sky.

Aenys and Alyssa make noise alright, mostly of awkward grunting and the occasional swear as do their best to not make eye contact. Sex on a musty stone floor is as uncomfortable and humiliating as they both imagined it to be. They're stained with dirt and things none either wants to think about at the end. When it's over they chuckle awkwardly again, before Aenys shreds Alyssa's skirt into bandages to staunch the bleeding between her legs, from the rough ride rather than any effort on his part.

"More padding in the leathers, then," Alyssa grumbles. "When we must. Good thing you're my husband, Aenys, and not a replacement for a good ship or palfrey."

Aenys frowns thoughtfully at the cave mouth. "Do you suppose we should scream some more? Pretend it's as wild and passionate as all those dirty Lysene scrolls make the first night out to be?"

"I suppose we must," Alyssa concurs.

They proceed do to their very best imitations of passionate couples, screaming and roaring each other's names to the skies. They often have to pause, to bite back their laughter.

When it's near sundown Alyssa, long changed back into her leathers, clambers upon him. Aenys winces at the ache of his wings, gliding most of the way down to the Stone Drum. As soon as he transforms servants swarm upon them. They're rushed through baths, stuffed into clean clothes, and whisked off to the celebratory feast.

The new Prince and Princess of Dragonstone eat and drink with gusto, for the worst is at last behind them. They wince their way through their first dance and remain seated until they are next bundled up to their chambers, ostensibly to continue the celebrations. Utterly exhausted, they collapse fully clothed into bed. Well, nearly so.

"Oh, Aenys," Alyssa sighs as she shreds her gauzy atrocity of a Pentoshi gown in her haste to be rid of it. "You animal."

Aenys pops a button on the choking collar of his doublet. "You've woken the dragon, my love, and he's a beast not easily bedded."

Awkwardly they settle at opposite edges of the massive bed. Then Alyssa grumbles and shuffles closer.

"We're lucky the damned nights are still freezing," she mutters into his chest. "I'm not sleeping with a living furnace come summertime, cousin."

They make no child that night.

No. Their firstborn is conceived in the blissful weeks later, when Alyssa stops dreading their flights and instead laughs as the wind rips her hair free of its braids, when they come to know every curve of the other.

* * *

Their child is born small, but with the lungs of a dragon. She squalls her lungs out through the maester's inspection, the cleaning and the swaddling, until she at last latches onto her mother's breast. Aenys loves her immediately, hot and fierce like a dragon should. It is not the gentler love he feels for Alyssa, teased out and nurtured over time and endless weeks together.

"Rhaena. I'd like to name her Rhaena." He pauses anxiously. "If it pleases you, Alyssa."

"To name my little girl for the greatest of the dragon queens?" Alyssa jests. "Aenys, it would please me very much."

The apprehension draining from his shoulders, Aenys kisses his wife's brow, and does the same to their daughter's downy head. Rhaena does not even stir from her suckling.

"She'll be a dragon," he vows quietly. "I'm sure of it." He's dreamed of his little girl with wings of her own, and so it must be so. The vision gives him hope and pride, to fight back against the fear that otherwise threatens to swallow all else.

When the Conqueror's black eyes water at the revelation of his grandchild's name, the fear dwindles in Aenys' chest, and further still when Aegon tenderly holds the babe to his chest and weeps in joyous, anguished pride. Never, however, does it leave him entirely.

Andal law is iron. Trueborn sons succeed their fathers. Should such sons not exist, succession falls to the trueborn daughters. When their are no direct heirs, only then does succession fall to brothers and their issues, then to sisters, and so on.

But Valyrian law is fickle as flame. Initial succession favors the oldest and strongest sons, but might upend if a younger brother or sister awakes their dragon blood instead. Should the dragonlord die without dragon heirs, a sibling might inherit over offspring. Should their be no strong successor at all, then the people themselves might speak forth, to choose the strongest dragon-child or most likely dragon to rally behind.

So the realm whispers and speculates. Is Rhaena an heiress before Maegor? Are the Andal laws followed or do they rally behind the younger son of the Conqueror, a proven dragon?

Aenys and Alyssa, still relishing in the birth of their child, leaves the realm to its rumblings. Those first blissful moons revolve around Rhaena, her first gummy smiles and the infant blue eyes that spring up lovely lilac. When he must show himself in court, Aenys pointedly favors those who have already openly declared Rhaena his heir. He catches the eyes of those who instead murmur for Maegor. They pale beneath his quicksilver gaze, when they remember the blood their new princess springs from.

That same year, at an otherwise innocuous feast on Dragonstone, Visenya calmly proposes a betrothal between Rhaena and Maegor. "To settle the whispers, of course," she continues, even as Alyssa's smile hardens and Aenys crumbles his silver goblet like parchment. "They are a mere eleven years apart, brother, and your only unattached heirs. The wise thing to do would be to join them now, and unite their claims, so their children will be pure as they can be."

Aenys feels a rage bubble forth him, one he has never felt before, so hot he fears it will melt through his human skin. Alyssa lays her hand over his. He does his best to stop shaking, to swallow the fire burning like bile.

"We appreciate your sentiments, aunt," she says, smooth as silk, "but strongly oppose such a match much too premature. Rhaena will be our heir until only a son is born, but she has not even seen her first turn of the year. How can we possibly start planning for so distant a future now?"

Still wrestling down the alien urge to lunge himself over the table for his aunt's throat, Aenys looks to his father. So does Visenya. The Conqueror's face is stoic, black eyes inscrutable.

"I will weigh the merits of such a match," he announces. "Should I agree to betroth Rhaena, it will not be for many years yet."

Targaryen betrothals are always such flexible agreements, with easy escape clauses should the need ever arise, and a daughter prove herself a dragon after all.

Visenya bites back her snarl and Aenys his smile. They bow in silent acknowledgement to their king's wishes and argue no more.

The rumors spread like wildfire. Public support near simultaneously condemns such a match and Visenya's gross overambition and Aenys' own fury banks a little.

Few object as strongly as the High Septon, who instead suggests his own niece as a bride. Ceryse Hightower is a daughter of one of the greatest houses in all the Seven Kingdoms, whose support had been crucial in securing Aegon the blessings of the Faith and a formal coronation. She is Maegor's elder by a full decade, without a drop of dragon blood in her veins.

Aegon consents to the match. His court says nothing about the new scar slashing across his face, or his queen's new limp.

Two years later, Aenys sits in the front pew when Maegor sweeps the marriage cloak over his bride's shoulders. Alyssa sits at his side and shy little Rhaena in her lap, face burrowed into her mother's breast. This is not the Conqueror's Sept, but the Starry Sept itself, seat of the Faith. Maegor is only three and ten, but a broad-shouldered bull of a boy already tall enough to look down at his new wife.

Anxiously Aenys watches the new couple proceed down the aisle. In the grand square outside Targaryen and Hightower men clear a wide berth. Maegor scarcely pulls away from Ceryse before black and bronze flames take him. Unlike on Dragonstone, where the crowd cheered their prince's transformation, the smallfolk of Oldtown gasp in more horror than awe when they fall before Maegor's shadow. His scales are black, his horns dark bronze. When his molten eyes fixate on Ceryse, he does not look like her bridegroom, but a dragon like out of the old Andal fairy tales about to carry off a maiden.

Face white as a sheet, Ceryse climbs atop his back. Maegor is built more robustly than Aenys, with a thick neck and barrel-like chest. He is large enough to carry a passenger at thirteen, where Aenys was fifteen, and swiftly on track to...

Well, today is a joyous day. While Maegor takes his new wife for a lap around the Whispering Sound, Aenys makes merry with the crowds and enjoys the present, rather than wallow in fears for the future.

Sometime later Maegor swaggers in. Ceryse walks at his side in careful, measured steps. Her new gown has long sleeves and a high neck, despite the heat of the Reach.

Maegor proudly boasts of taking his bride a dozen times atop the Hightower, of putting a dragon son in her. He drinks half his weight in wine, before Ceryse has him retire her with her for the evening.

With Rhaena long put to bed by her nursemaid, her parents imbibe their wine and feed each other from their plates as if they are the newly-weds. Maegor's wedding is more blissful for them than their own ever was.

Aenys is determined to make it up their own chambers, but Alyssa isn't that patient. She drags him into a door much closer. Their bemused Kingsguard serves as their spotter. They eagerly make themselves at home in Lord Beesbury's bed, while the drunk and pugnacious lord himself tries to argue his way inside.

Spent, Aenys slumps guiltily against the soiled sheets. He sighs as he pulls himself up. "I suppose it's time to go apologize and-"

Alyssa grabs his hand and glances meaningfully at the window.

"No," he murmurs. "We couldn't possibly-"

"What's the matter, Aenys? You never escaped an angry tutor before? If _I'd_ had wings as a girl I would've flown off and never come back the first time that bitch of a septa threatened to strap me."

"O-Of course not," he stutters. "Why would I want to make my own teachers so upset?"

"Well, I'm the wife and mother of your child, Aenys. Do you want to make _me_ upset?"

In their drunken logic, this makes perfect sense to them both. So, before Lord Beesbury can push his way inside, Aenys forces the window open, and jumps. Alyssa follows a heartbeat later.

She lands solidly upon his back, for Aenys is a harder and harder target to miss. Her skin blistered and hardened to his heat, she whoops triumphantly as the horrified Kingsguard shouted after them sinks back into the night.

Aenys rounds the harbor several times. If Oldtown is magnificent by day, then it is even more so by night. Its cobbled streets shine like veins of silver in the moonlight and its lanterns shine like stars. The light of the Hightower blazes like a second, miniature sun.

After awhile he circles back to the Hightower, trying to dizzily determine which window is theirs, and the logistics of squeezing back inside. He tries to make for the top instead, where Maegor had landed earlier, but the sight of the sentries manning the light is suddenly too awkward to face. So he wheels around once more, for a dark, isolated island he sighted in the harbor earlier.

"So this is Aenys' Landing, is it?" Alyssa giggles as she slips off his back. "Quite the conquest, my dragon."

With a playful growl he transforms, and they stake their claims upon this land together.

Shortly before dawn, a small ship comes to fetch them. Their escort thankfully comes bearing fresh clothes.

Heavy with hangovers and regret, but still soaring high, Aenys and Alyssa land to little fanfare. Most of the Hightower is too slow in its own recovery from the festivities before to pay them much mind, and all of Maegor's... _loudness_ during the night eclipsed their own drunken escapades.

Breaking their fast that morning, Aenys sneaks glances to his family. Visenya stews in silence, though she hides it for the boy flush with his repeated conquests. Ceryse picks at her porridge and converses almost solely with her maternal kin. Aegon catches his eye. He grins knowingly right before lifting his goblet to drink.

* * *

 For all of Maegor's boasting of the dragon son he spawned that night, Ceryse's belly never swells. Alyssa's does, as she grows round and fair as the moon.

"Egg," Rhaena solemnly names the bump of her mother's belly.

"A babe, sweetling," Alyssa laughs at her. "Even little dragons are born as babes."

Rhaena rolls lilac eyes at her. "I know that, Mama. That's Egg's _name."_

Little Egg he remains to them, for all he becomes Aegon to the wider realm. He and his sister are inseparable. It is Rhaena who coaxes Egg's first smile, Rhaena who encourages Egg to push his way across the floor to her, Rhaena in whose shadow Egg determinedly toddles.

Aenys watches them, bursting with love and pride. Once more he finds himself mourning for the siblings his own mother never gave him, the relationship with Maegor that Visenya jealously denied him. The bond between Egg and Rhaena is a precious thing, like those his own parents once shared. He wishes it need never end, that their love with only flourish and evolve rather than drift apart.

But such wishful thinking Aenys pushes to the back of his mind, at least for the time being.

Three years after Egg comes Viserys, named more for so for his Velaryon ancestors than the Targaryen. His older siblings open themselves up to him, somewhat. Egg at last has a brother who loves getting swatted with swords, that loves sitting on their grandfather's lap beside him to pester the Conqueror with the glory days of his conquest. Rhaena brushes and ties up Viserys' long hair to look as pretty as hers, for Egg's has been cut short.

All of them clamber for rides, be it from their mother's arms or clinging to his backs with only straps of chain and leather to keep them safe. Aenys obliges them, of course, whenever he can. He lives for their whoops and joyful shouts as much as he yearns for them to find their own wings, so that they might soar beside him. When they can he and Alyssa take them in their yearly progresses, to introduce them to the realm at large. Aenys can fly his whole family, for together all three of his children weigh only as much as a second adult rider.

Rhaena is nine when she first finds her fire. Such an age is closer to normal, for Aenys himself had been precociously early, like his mother before him. Even before she can properly fly her brothers beg her for rides too, for all their parents stonily forbid it.

Beneath Aenys' careful instruction Rhaena learns how to properly fold her wings and walk on all fours, how to use her tail as balance and support. Then she learns to fly, when he can finally coax her into the sky. So great is her elation she breathes her first flame, ethereal white streaked with burning blue.

When Rhaena returns to her other lessons her eyes are a light, blazing blue, bright as the sky. She is much too young and inexperienced for passengers. Their family still flies together, but with Alyssa and the boys always astride Aenys.

Two years after Rhaena first flies, baby Jaehaerys is born. Aegon and Viserys quickly lose interest in him, when he proves to do little beyond sleep and cry. But Rhaena, always enchanted with becoming a big sister, dotes upon him. When she first transforms before him, Jaehaerys is mesmerized, and claps in delight every time she does so. So too does he coo for the rings of smoke she puffs for him and laughs as she swoops and spins above the castle courtyard.

Rhaena is two and ten when she and Egg go missing. Immediately Aenys runs for the outside and is airborne, burning his finery to ash. He finds his daughter wobbling dangerously in the air, straining against the unfamiliar, over-large weight of the passenger upon her back. Aenys swoops down upon them, gently snatching Egg in his teeth. The boy's leathers at least minimize the chance of his fangs breaking the skin.

When they're both safe and sound back on the ground, Aenys roars and snarls at them. It is Alyssa who must strip their children for their stupidity. Rhaena, gentle little Rhaena, dares loom above her mother and roar that if they aren't going to help Egg find his wings, then she sure as seven hells will. Aenys butts her back with his head, throwing his wings wide open. Both of his children shrink back, as if realizing he's not only their fool of a father, but dragon so many times Rhaena's sizes.

When Alyssa stonily repeats their punishments, they listen, and slink off like beaten dogs.

Only later does the fury fade, and Aenys finds his man shape once again. He reconciles with his children, but most important is channeling their recklessness towards more constructive paths. He is squired out to Ser Addison Hill, to channel his frustrations into lance and blade and axe. Alyssa sends for one of her younger nieces, to be the female companion Rhaena has long needed. Larissa Velaryon becomes their daughter's first true friend, who encourages her to sing and banter before the court rather than retreat into her scales. Rhaena gathers many female companions, after that.

When Jaehaerys is a boy of two, Alyssa brings their fifth child into the world. Aenys immediately christens her Alysanne.

"I'm flattered, love," his wife tells him wearily, "but do not think this means I'm trying for another child just to see it named after you."

Aenys laughs. "It'll happen if the gods will it, Alyssa, but I'm not cursing any child of yours with my name."

Few boys his age had been fool enough to tease a dragon-prince growing up. That does not mean the next Aenys will be as fortunate.

Alysanne is the last grandchild Aegon shall ever hold. He passes away the year after, Egg and Viserys on his lap and waiting for the conclusion of a story that will never come.

* * *

When news of his sire's passing reaches him, Aenys is in Highgarden. Before the messenger finishes he's bolting for the open air and near collapses from exhaustion when he reaches Dragonstone.

Aenys is not surprised to discover the Conqueror had died as a man, and not a dragon as the lore so exemplifies. In his last years Aegon had assumed the shape of the Black Dread rarely. Until the end, Aegon remained a mystery to even his eldest son, but Aenys knew his father to know he was nothing like Aunt Visenya, who has scales that stubbornly creep at her forehead and claws that never properly settle back into nails.

Before the eyes of his family Aenys is acclaimed king by Grand Maester Gawen, the Conqueror's crown placed upon his head. It shall be the first ceremony of many. First, however, comes the funeral.

It is Maegor entrusted with the eulogy. Dragons do not weep, and so Aenys must bottle up his tears in stoic silence and his best imitation of their sire. Maegor speaks without sorrow, praising the Black Dread and the Conqueror and the Dragon King. The accolades fall short on Aegon's shriveled form, so small atop the pyre.

Assuming dragon shape after is a sweet relief, to pour forth flames instead of wailing grief. In his scales Aenys can properly act the stoic king, and not the blubbering son.

It is Egg, the eldest grandchild not to have found his fire, to wade into the ashes to collect them for the scattering. Aenys and Maegor, Visenya and Rhaena, rise as one, to consign the Conqueror to the skies and reunite him with his Silver Queen at last.

When the last cinders are scattered, Aenys lands. He resumes human shape, clad only dragonscale armor and his Valyrian crown, to retrieve Blackfyre from the rubble. Spiritually cleansed by dragonfire of its old energies, the blade is ready for its next wielder. Aenys has trained with this sword. It is his inheritance, his birthright.

Aware of Maegor's molten eyes burning into him, Aenys commands Egg - _Aegon,_ the only one now- to kneel. Laying the blade over his shoulders, he proclaims him as Aegon Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone, his eldest son and heir. Then the Lord of Seven Kingdoms commends his son to prove himself worthy of Blackfyre, for one day he shall wield it in his stead.

Aegon's eyes are still juvenile lilac. He is eleven now, and his awakening imminent.

Aenys knows the day will come, just as he knew it would come for Rhaena.

From Dragonstone he flies to King's Landing. Admist the rubble of the old Aegonfort and the foundations of the new castle rising he lands. The Iron Throne, forged by Aegon's blades from the surrendered swords of the conquered, stands tall and jagged beneath the open skies. So does Aenys, first of his name, claim his father's throne before the cheering crowds and in full view of the Seven.

Through the heart of the Seven Kingdoms, Aenys flies with his family. They proceed through Riverrun, Lannisport, and Highgarden before they reach Oldtown. In the Starry Sept where Maegor married over a decade ago, the new High Septon presents him an ornate golden crown with the faces of the Seven inlaid in gold and pearl. This becomes his crown of peace, which Aenys contentedly wears in court when he has no immediate need of his dragon shape.

The White King, the people take to calling him, for the whiteness of his hide immediately sets him apart from his father and brother, both black of scale. Aenys revels in the name and the promising first few weeks of his reign.

Peace is short-lived. Within a year Red Harren rises in the riverlands, a dead priest stirs up rebellion in the Iron Islands, and a Vulture King gathers an army across the Dornish border. The most egregious insult comes when Jonos Arryn deposes his own brother, the Warden of the East raised up by the Targaryens themselves.

Aenys tries his hardest to rule as a human king, and not just a dragon-lord. He commands his vassals to call up their levies and prove the power a realm united, offers the rebels the same chance his father did Harren Hoare and those ill-fated fools upon the Fields of Fire for peaceful surrender.

Aenys wars with himself, he craves to rule and to rage, to fly and to fortify, to burn out his foes and coil around his family, for fear of might prey upon them.

When the raven of Jonos Arryn's treachery reaches him, Aenys can take no more. He's on the verge of ordering Lord Alyn Stokeworth out to the Eyrie when it is whispered Red Harren might try to storm King's Landing in the absence of most of its levies, the same city where Aenys has settled his family.

With single-minded intent, his gaze snaps to the west. He makes it to the open air before he loses control of his fire.

Lord Alyn Stokeworth is quick to muster up a few hundred men and ride after his king. Aenys fixates on the cluster of villages Red Harren was last sighted around. He turns his fire upon the woods, to burn out whatever rebels may be creeping there. Though he avoids the farms and their fields sometimes the flames spill over regardless.

The campaign is a disaster, that burns a scar through the riverlands. Lord Alyn tries to send his men to search where no dragon can reach and yet shadow his restless king at all times, for fear of him being ambushed when he must land. Red Harren remains close to villages, their people becoming his human shields.

Aenys watches helplessly from the air when Red Harren cuts down his Hand. His grief and his fury is unleashed as white-hot dragonfire. Red Harren dies screaming, along with Bernarr Brune, Lord Alyn's devoted squire, and so many of Aenys' own men.

Weary and heartsick, Aenys returns home from his hollow victory to slightly better news. Maegor has solved the Vale problem. His black shadow on the horizon had led to Jonos' men turning upon him. Only the blood of traitors has been spilled in the Eyrie, and Hubert Arryn peacefully raised as the new Warden of the East.

By the beginning of the following year, the other two rebellions have solved themselves. In the Iron Islands Goren Greyjoy puts over a thousand zealots to the sword, and sends his king the gift of Lodos' head pickled in brine. It is the storm lords who are to thank for slamming down the majority of the Vulture King's armies. Aenys is grieved but not surprised when he hears Orys Baratheon succumbed to his wounds after having his bloody vengeance. The man who might have been his blood had never been the same after Aegon's death, and a shadow of who he was before losing hand to the Dornish thirty years before.

Aenys is generous with the survivors of the rebellions, rewarding those loyal to the crown with gold, honors, and offices. To Goren Greyjoy Aenys grants gold and the boon of seven years' grace in further introduction of septons. The High Septon is furious at such a slight, but to Aenys it is a mutual compromise to ease the ironmen's transition into the wider realm. Greyjoy's first request had been for the utter banishment of the Faith from his isles, after all. To Davos Baratheon, Orys' heir, he grants lands along the border and a place upon his small council.

Yet it is Maegor, fierce and loyal Maegor, Aenys names his Hand.

"We shall rule together," he proudly tells his brother, "and together keep our family safe."

Maegor's stoic face crumbles at that, ever so slightly. It is enough to Aenys to smile hopefully back.

Their father built this realm. Perhaps together his two sons shall be enough to stabilize it, and ensure a realm for their line forevermore.

* * *

For two years, there is peace.

Then, there is a child. To the realm, the pregnancy is a guarantee of their queen's proven fertility. To Aenys and Alyssa, this last babe is an unexpected blessing from the Seven, a final child to complete their family. They are both over thirty now, with five healthy heirs between them, and no need to try for more.

Vaella Targaryen comes early. She is small and pale, with the thinnest mewl of a cry. Aenys shivers when he first takes her into his arms. Though she squirms she is cold, without the fire that flows through the blood of her siblings.

Less than a moon later, Aenys awakes with a terrible scream, when his sharp ears hear no breathing from her cradle. His roar summons the maester. When his own servants try to usher him from his quarters Aenys shrugs them off and snarls at the persistent. He paces the chamber in restless circles, as the healers try and fail to fight the Stranger.

"I'm sorry, your grace, but the princess is already g-"

Aenys lunges forward to snatch Vaella from the maester's arms. He rocks and sings to her, cradles her close as if his inner fire can relight a spark in her little body, so cold and limp. But not even dragons can defeat death.

Dragons do not weep. But fathers do, and Aenys hollows his grief to the heavens. He shudders with a sensation he thinks transformation, but only tears come gushing forth, ripped from the well of heart. Wetness, hot and alien after so many years, flow down his cheeks like liquid fire. When strange hands try to take his little girl from him, Aenys defends his daughter as a dragon must, snapping at fingers and slashing at arms with steel-sharp claws.

"Aenys, Aenys," Alyssa's wavering voice whispers into his ear. "Please. Give her to me."

Aenys still, uncurling from himself to recognize his wife beside him. Wordlessly he delivers his daughter into the arms of the mother who bore her.

An hour later, his flames consign Vaella Targaryen to the pyre. There is no grand funeral, only the family Aenys already had gathered with him on Dragonstone. He cares not where Maegor has flown off to, and will not delay sending his daughter into peace everlasting.

Aegon's cremation had lasted hours. In less than one Vaella's tiny body is ash that Aenys shakily collects into a little urn no larger than she is- _was._ Alyssa cradles the earn like a sleeping babe as they descend into the catacombs, their five solemn children in tow. Even little Alysanne doesn't wail in grief or fright. She just clutches the hand of Jaehaerys, silent tears streaming down her cheeks.

Down the ages they march, from those first few of the family interred since their flight from Old Valyria. They stop before Valaena Velaryon, Vaella's partial namesake. Gazing upon the small little inlet that shall be his little girl's eternal resting place, Aenys trembles. How lonely she will be down here, with only distant great-grandparents for neighbors. All other Targaryens born since Lord Daemion have died dragons. Their spirits soar free upon the skies.

He vows to visit her often, so that Vaella will never be lonely, here in the forlorn dark.

The court is still dressed in mourning black, when Maegor flies from the riverlands with a stranger on his back. She is Alys Harroway, and Visenya weds them in the Valyrian rite when the septon of the Conqueror's Sept steadfastly refuses to bless the match.

"It's polygamy!" Aenys hisses in Maegor's face. "You spit upon the very Faith that secures our rule!"

"We are the blood of Old Valyria," Maegor retorts, stoic as stone. "The blood of dragons. We answer to none but ourselves."

"We were both baptized in the Faith, and _you answer to me!"_ Aenys snarls into his little brother's face. Maegor might be near twice as wide, but they match each other inch for inch as men. "Set her aside. Now."

His brother takes a single step back. "Father gave me a defective wife," he answers, with only a faint growl. "I tried annulling the match for a womb barren as Valyria, but that hypocrite of a High Septon refused to see reason. So I will not _deny_ him or Ceryse. No. I have only raised Alys to her level, so that I might have some damned dragons of my own."

"Not in my territory," Aenys bites out. "So long as I live, you won't make a laughingstock out of my house. Set your Alys aside, or leave. Forever."

Their forms shiver as they glare at the other, dragons straining against human skin. Maegor's molten gaze flicks to Ser Addison Hill and all his Kingsguard, closing in step by step.

"As my king commands," Maegor demands, black creeping at his temples. He barrels out of Dragonstone's halls. The fire takes him as soon he steps into open air, tail slamming a door from its post in his haste to take off.

Aenys charges after him, shrugging off the hands of his guards. Heartbeats later, he's airborne. From a distance he flights as his little brother's white shadow. The moment Maegor turns for the mainland, or upon him with fire and fang, Aenys is ready to fly back to Dragonstone and denounce him as a traitor. No other fortress in Westeros is as prepared for a dragon attack, and not even a dragon can rally against Seven Kingdoms out for his blood.

Once satisfied Maegor is indeed flying for Essos, Aenys flies for home. His pace quickens when he spots two more dragons, the only others yet in the world, aloft.

Visenya is thrice his age and thrice his size, bronze scales dulled from age and marred from a hundred spars against her siblings and the wars in Dorne. Tenacious little Rhaena is dwarfed by her, a tiny terrier against the jaws of the direwolf. Aenys falls in beside his daughter, gazing down at the Conqueror's queen.

After a moment that lasts eternity, Visenya dips her head into a mockery of a bow, and flies north. She makes her new court across the Blackwater Bay in Crackclaw Point, among those that have long loved her. She is an uneasy shadow over his head, but at least not one roosting in his home.

"This won't stand forever, love," Alyssa cautions him later, in the privacy of their own chambers.

Aenys smiles grimly, before he presses a reverent kiss to her shoulder. "It doesn't have to, love. Even that hoary old bitch has to drop dead sooner or later." Alyssa scowls at him. "She's as mortal as I am, Alyssa. As my parents were. Even if she never takes human form again won't stop the Stranger from finding her. We age like any other man, scales or not. Then it will be two dragons against one."

"More soon, gods willing," Alyssa murmurs.

They think of Aegon, master of weapons and dragonback, thirteen and still without wings of his own. They think of Viserys, who is of prime age. There is Jaehaerys and Alysanne, whose violet eyes always gaze dreamily skyward. Their five dragons.

Their only five. Aenys will not bury another child like their Vaella. Alyssa refuses to let him sire one, when her own health is increasingly at risk.

Six dragons against one. Even three would be enough.

The day after Maegor's exile, Aenys pointedly bestows Blackfyre upon Aegon, declaring his heir once and for all.

Aegon's eyes blaze with determination and nothing more. He may never be a dragon his own, but that will never stop him from ruling beside one.

* * *

Despite all the warnings given, Alys Harroway still slips out of custody and steals across the narrow sea to Essos, following Maegor into his exile less than a year later. The furious High Septon blames Aenys for abetting the two, just as he still steadfastly believes Aenys let the polygamy happen beneath his nose. Aenys attempts to make peace by appointed Septon Murmison his new Hand of the King and never quite understands why the Faith is still so furious, despite the voice they now have on his small council and the daily running of the realm.

Aenys is no stranger to queer dreams, but now nightmares stalk him every night, and refuse to let him go. He dreams of Rhaena, courageous little Rhaena, holding the Seven Kingdoms as the sole dragon of her generation. He dreams a dozen dragons, pouring out of the east, to tear her and the realm apart like so many vultures. Not long after rumor reaches him of the Pentoshi sorceress Maegor has taken as his paramour.

With his brother's brood imminent, Aegon anxiously awaits the day Aegon shows his fire. Or even Viserys, so that two dragons might fly the sky on their wedding day.

When he can delay no longer, and his dreams scream into his head, Aenys wears his crown of Valyrian steel, and not his golden crown of peace, to court. In an iron voice he announces Rhaena, his eldest daughter and his only dragon heir so far, shall wed Aegon, his eldest son and heir. Together they shall rule the realm like their namesakes, Aegon and Rhaenys, before them, to bring peace and prosperity under the shadow of dragons.

The lords of Blackwater Bay, no stranger to Targaryen tradition, naturally accept this. From the other lords Aenys expects some mild confusion. Instead their faces twist in horrified outrage that perplexes him. After fourty years of Valyrian rule, do so many not understand dragon must wed dragon? Alyssa had been his cousin, yes, but the closest bride available with the blood. Aegon has the luxury of a dragon-wife fully of his blood.

Aenys acts as a strong king must, and refuses to bow before pressure from those who do not know better. His father had compromised so much with the Faith. Aenys abides by their every law, has even banished his own brother for his gross heresy, save for the law that endangers the future of his dynasty. When the alternative is Maegor descending on the realm with his bastards, is dragon wedding dragon really so astounding?

Aenys and Alyssa do their damnedest to make the ceremony inclusive. Instead of remaining isolated on Dragonstone, their eldest are wed in the Sept of Remembrance on the hill of Rhaenys by Septon Murmison himself. His sermon preaches of love and tolerance, most especially the harmony new gods share with the old, the same the Seven must also share with those from Old Valyria.

In the yard outside royal retainers and members of the settlement's fledgling guard clear a path for the newly weds. The Warrior's Sons in the scowl, eyes taking note of every guest to emerge from the sept. Yet there is no open hostility. Aenys takes this as a hopeful beginning and so nods to his daughter.

Rhaena transforms. She has his slender build, sky-blue scales streaked silver-white. She is beautiful in a way brutish Visenya and Maegor will never be, a shining example of the Targaryens destine to rule over their realm forevermore. Some of the loyalists in the crowd cheer loud and clear above the doubtful murmurs of the multitude. Aenys beams proudly when Aegon mounts Rhaena with smooth, expert grace. They've ridden together for years. Now their match is official.

When their marriage is consummated, Aenys orders them on a progress of their own, to win the love of the people as he and Alyssa once had. Aegon still has no wings of his own, but no man can seem lesser from astride dragonback.

From King's Landing Aenys always anxiously awaits news. His children receive only jeer and scorns, wherever they go. Their tempers help little. Aegon is quick to burn, for all he lacks a true fire, and Rhaena uses her dragon form to leer over the crowds rather than try to engage them at their level.

Then comes the letter expelling Septon Murmison from the Faith, for performing an incestuous marriage. Aenys spits sparks in his outrage, catching the letter alight.

"T-That _firebrand_ dares call you a traitor, Murmison, when you're one of the few trying to keep the peace?"

"I knew excommunication was a risk, your grace," the septon answers with resigned acceptance. "I do not regret my loyalty to House Targaryen. The Faith has already shown precedent in confirming your kingly father and his sister-wives as members. There is no difference between the marriage of your parents and those of your children, save the war hawk in charge right now."

Aenys squares his shoulders. "We must write to him, septon, and ensure _he_ knows that."

Together they work day and night to craft a letter detailing the long history and necessity of Valyrian marriage customs. Aenys points out every concession made to the Faith, save for the most crucial sacrament that keeps the dragon blood from diluting itself beyond reemergence. Septon Murmison bolsters his arguments with excerpts of the Seven-Sided Star, most especially those passages of peaceful cooperation with the followers of the old gods.

The raven loosed has had little time to reach Oldtown, before a reply is sent. The envelope, coldly addressed to _'King Abomination,'_ kills any hopes of reconciliation before it is even opened.

The opening paragraphs tear down every argument Aenys and Septon Murmison have so carefully crafted. It derides them as traitors and breakers one of the Faith's most sacred sacraments.

 _It is the beast blood in you,_ the letter scathingly reads, _that makes you think yourself above the laws of gods and men. Such was the fate of your ancestors, when the Doom condemned them all to the fires of the seven hells. Your own father, Seven rest his soul, recognized the error of his ways when the Mother granted him no daughters to continue propagating his faith. Yet, though you and your lady wife were blessed with five perfect children, still you chose to damn the Prince and Princess through a sham marriage._

_If the gods will the dragons to die out as They intended with the Doom, Such is Their heavenly will. It is the destiny of men to be ruled by men, and you have proven yourself no man at all. Let it thus be known I excommunicate you from the Faith of the Seven, Aenys Targaryen, and have decreed you as thus to the authorities of the Great Septs._

_May the Seven have mercy on your soul._

Aenys tries to keep his faith in the people, but far too many believe the High Septon's lies that he is a pretender and a traitor. He is no longer their White King, but sneered at as their Wyrmking, pale and pathetic, yet another beast for the gallant knights to slay like in the stories of eld.

Within a fortnight, Septon Murmison is hacked to pieces, and the Warrior's Sons storm the Sept of Remembrance to fortify it for themselves. The streets of King's Landing run red with the blood of innocents caught in the crossfire between zealot and loyalist.

Alyssa begs him to at least let their three youngest retreat to Dragonstone. Aenys refuses. They are safest by his side, when he might wrap them in his wings, and his flames incinerate whatever threatens them. With Visenya and Maegor lurking in his nightmares, how can he trust his children elsewhere?

At last, after weeks of beginning and cajoling, his wife wears even a dragon's will thin. He concedes to abandoning King's Landing, to carry her and all their youngest to safety. He is three days from setting his affairs in order, when two Poor Fellows scale the walls of their fortified manse.

Aenys awakes to screams and the tell-tale scent of burning flesh. He springs from bed and tears down the hallway. He hears two high, keening cries cut off as they at last succumb to the flames.

Servants are already doing their best to stamp out and dampen the flames before they catch. Ser Raymont Baratheon, grim-faced, has dropped his blade to the floor. He kneels on the floor, trying to make his bulk as possible, as he consoles the two little shapes coiled together at the back of the bedchamber beyond.

The Poor Fellows must have stolen into royal apartments intending to kill their king. First they had stumbled upon the bed Jaehaerys and Alysanne had shared.

Aenys bites back tears of pride and rage, that his youngest were forced to find their flames so early. Even Viserys, who stumbles from his chamber at the screams, looks wanly down at the blackened bodies and knows not to envy his siblings.

Escape has suddenly become much more complicated, for Aenys cannot carry two juvenile dragons atop two human passengers. Neither of his youngest know how to fly, much less possess the stamina to cross Blackwater Bay. Instead Aenys takes off with Alyssa and Viserys alone. He circles the city, eye fixated upon the covered wagon heading down to the docks with his children smuggled inside. He soars overhead, their watchful shadow, until they safely disembark at Dragonstone.

* * *

It is whispered indecision eats Aenys alive, that his inability to lay judgement upon the rebellious Faithful withers his features and strips the light from his eyes, that makes him appear a decript soul long past fifty rather than a man of thirty-five. Others decree it is the Seven punishing him, the Stranger dragging him to the grave and the Father preventing his wicked lips from ordering the Faithful harmed.

Alyssa sees only her husband. The maester can scarce persuade him to pick off his plates or sleep. Aenys wanders the crypts and castle of Dragonstone like a restless ghost, eyes a world away. When he sits still, it is to pray on the cold stone floor of the Conqueror's Sept until he collapses.

"How can I harm them, Alyssa?" he asks, over and over. "They are my _people,_ my brothers and sisters in the Faith."

They are the enemies of him, of their children. Damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't.

Part of him has never left the villages of the hunt for Red Harren, the homes and innocents burned by his flames. His own men, caught in the crossfire.

Alyssa has not seen her husband's other face since those first few days on Dragonstone, when he had ensured Jaehaerys and Alysanne knew the basics of their dragon forms. Aenys starves himself. He needs whole herds of sheep and heads of cattle to feed his ever-growing form. He scarcely picks his human plates.

For long as long as Alyssa has known him, the eyes of Aenys are brilliant as quicksilver. Without their inner spark they are a dull, lusterless gray.

Her dread only intensifies the day a bronze colossus descends upon Dragonstone. Queen Visenya is no longer classically beautiful, but as magnficient as she is terrible. Even on two legs she cannot wholly escape the hunch of a dragon's low-slung posture. The bronze scales that have long creeped at her temples have descended onto her cheeks and into what had once been her hairline. She lisps through black-tipped fangs.

Aenys hisses as he struggles to rise from his seat. "Have the vultures come to circle so soon, aunt?"

"You are my nephew, and my king," Visenya intones evenly. "I have come to help you, through your... turmoil. One dragon to another."

"This is your doing," he snarls. "Your sor-"

"Your sssicknesss of ssspirit is entirely your own fault!" she roars. "You burn yourssself from the inssside out, rather than turn your wrath upon thossse dessserving of it. Bring dow fire and blood, as a dragon should. The Ssstarry Sssept, the Sssept of Remembranccce. Burn them in their nessstsss and you burn the fight from them."

"Never!" Aenys bellows back. "Not so long as I live. Now _leave."_

Visenya departs the castle. She remains on the Dragonmont, circling like a vulture. Alyssa forbids Jaehaerys and Alysanne from the volcano. She keeps them close, and the Dragonguard vigilant of them and the Bronze Bitch alike.

Her presence rouses gentle Aenys into restlessly pacing the Painted Table, frothing fits where speech fails him entirely. It does not bring back his dragon.

Perhaps it is a sickness of spirit. Perhaps it is sorcery or poison, from the fate breathing down their necks. Alyssa does her best to call in new, safe sources of food and drink. She doubles the taste testers and the guards on the stores, but such covert methods were designed to slay dragonlords, and not men. The taste testers are dragonseeds, as undiluted in the blood as can be found in the smallfolk. She orders the maesters to keep an eye on her youngest, but her little dragons never show any symptoms. Jaehaerys and Alysanne only grow and thrive, while their father splutters like a candle at the end of its wick.

The uneasy stalemate is broken by a raven, solemnly reporting Aegon and Rhaena besieged at Crakehall.

The master scarcely gets the sentence out, before Aenys lets out a furious, strangled sound. Alyssa leaps back, as the air around him burns.

"Clear a path!" she roars to the castle guards. "Now!"

Aenys retains control enough to drag himself down the hall, form twisting and bubbling. To Alyssa his transformations have always been a thing of beauty. Now, without the quicksilver flames, she follows with horrid fascination as scales rip through way free of his flesh, as his neck distends and arms warp into wings.

By the time Aenys reaches the outside, he is half-formed. With a terrible shriek he unfolds his wings, swelling to his full, formidable size as soon as he meets sunlight. He whips his wings, again and again, as if he whips the earth itself for all its cruelties.

Alyssa hitches a breath when he finally ascends. She watches his flight with faint, delicate hope.

Aenys does not fly fifty feet, before he collapses. Alyssa hears a high-pitched, terrible scream. It takes her forever to realize the sound is her own.

The White King falls and does not rise again. He is dead by dawn.

By the evening, enough wood has been gathered for his pyre. It is Alyssa who hoarsely manages the eulogy and uses up the last of her voice to his funeral dirge, one last song to lull him from his this world and into the next.

Three dragons light his pyre, though two manage thin streaks of flame while Visenya breathes a bonfire. The Bronze Queen looms over them all, large enough to swallow delicate little Alysanne alive. Jaehaerys and Alyssa coil together, a dragon with two heads instead of one. Alyssa stands impassively while Viserys trembles at her side, until the flames at last die down for him to wade in to collect his sire's ashes. The honor should be Aegon's, as the first son, the eldest child yet to show his wings.

Viserys shakes with rage and grief, his face twisting into a snarl when he thrusts the first urn to Visenya. She is the oldest dragon alive, his aunt and Dowager Queen. More gently, he passes them to Jaehaerys and then to Alysanne.

 _Fly free, my love,_ Alyssa prays, as the dragons fly. _You are free, now. Free from all of this._

Her ashes scattered, Visenya wheels to the east, dropping the urn to shatter to the earth.

_Seven protect us. Seven strike them dead. A storm, a rogue wave, all the poison they fed by Aenys._

Hours later, she and her three youngest are on a ship bound for Driftmark. Where else in this world is safe to shelter, but the only other island in the world where Targaryen blood flows near as strong, and the Faith has scarce had two generations to efface all that came before?

The world has claimed her husband and may yet claim her. It will not claim anymore of her children, not so long as she breathes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aenys was actually a really intriguing head to get into. Probably because he and Alyssa had the healthiest Targaryen relationship in at least four consecutive generations. Because Jaehaerys and Alysanne were still raised as siblings, dammit, and gods did those cracks show up in their relationship later.


	5. The Dragon Too Late

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Aegon Targaryen, the Dragon Too Late.

Egg's first memories are of Rhaena. She is big and strong and confident, when he's still little more than a baby himself. To Egg, at least. Quiet Rhaena always finds her fire to nock his bullies over, or climb up shelves to rescue a stranded kitten, or back-talk the septa for making him write with his right hand instead of his left.

More than, anything, he remembers their flights upon their father. He clings to Rhaena if only for the closeness, and they laugh as the wind whips through their hair and the sea sprays their face. This is their inheritance, their birthright, and Egg vows right then and there that is their future, to soar beside each other forever on their own wings.

Egg is six, when his big sister awakes her fire forever. She makes even more beautiful a dragon than she does a princess.

"Please, Father," he begs, on his hands and knees. But he does not cry, for dragons don't cry. Grandfather and Aunt Visenya say so, and they are the greatest dragons in the world. "Make me a dragon too!"

Father only smiles sadly, and lays a reassuring hand upon his shoulder. "I can't make you anything, my son. You will find your wings on your own time, or you will not. That does not make you any less my son, nor any less a dragon."

Father is right. That does not make him less of a dragon. That makes Egg no dragon at all.

Later, when Rhaena is allowed back from her lessons, Egg refuses to let his breath hitch in envy. They are brother and sister. They share everything that matters, from their blood to their future throne. What does it matter if her eyes burn sky-blue now, and no longer match his lilac? One day soon his will burn with a fire of their own, and the skies shall be theirs too.

"What does it feel like?" he asks instead.

Rhaena scrunches her face up with thought. "Like waking up, Egg, and not realizing you were asleep all your life before it. It feels like the first warm day after winter and like holding you and Serys for the first time when you were babies. It just feels... right. Like coming home."

Egg holds his breath for a long time, before finally asking her, "But... how did you wake up?"

For the first time, Rhaena's face shudders closed to him. It makes the pit in Egg burn even more, to discover the one divide he cannot cross. "I... I found what _I_ was missing, Egg. Just like Father found what was missing for him, and Grandfather and Aunt Visenya did. You have to find your own fire."

Glumly, he wonders if he has anything to find at all. If he walks into the fire, will he wake his heart, or burn like any other boy will?

Father still takes them flying sometimes, just him and Egg and Rhaena. Only now Rhaena soars free on wings of her own, while Egg must cling to their father's spikes and forever fear falling. It's not the same, anymore, but Egg never stops begging for time when he can. He can't let Rhaena forget this joy they first shared, can't bring himself to forget how the world unfolds beneath them like Grandfather's Painted Table.

* * *

Egg is nine, when Rhaena's other shape reaches the size of a horse. A bit bigger, even.

He is the same age as she when she first found her fire, and no closer to his.

Grandfather is old, now, and tired. He stares at the Painted Table, while Father takes up more and more of his rule. Aunt Visenya and Uncle Maegor are forever focused on their own issues, and visit Dragonstone little when their family is in residence. There is no one that can stop Rhaena from slipping loose from her tutor, and Egg from his. He knows the narrow paths up the Dragonmont like the back of his hand. Together they meet on the back side of the mountain, the sheer side down to the sea, where not even the Dragonguard can find them easily.

Egg bites his lip as he surveys his sister's dragon form. She's larger by the day, but still dwarfed by Father, and especially so by Grandfather and Aunt Visenya. "Are you sure about this, Rhae? If you don't think you're ready we can wait another year."

Rhaena nods once, a queenly thing she picked up from Mother and not Aunt Visenya. She kneels like they've seen Father do, but awkwardly.

Compared to Father, mounting her is easy. There's barely room to squeeze in between her spikes, but space enough. That must mean she's ready for a rider, right? Aegon clenches his legs around her sides, jolting a bit at her growl of protest. With a giddy laugh, he loosens his grip somewhat.

"Sorry, Rhae," he calls, wrapping his arms around her neck instead for extra security. She's so much smaller than Father and he feels every shift of her muscles as she shifts and strains for take-off. He revels at the closeness even as his head spins from dizzy euphoria.

Rhaena twists beneath him, snapping her wings with far too much fervor as she snaps and strains for the sky. He does his best to shift with her movements, to make himself as balanced as possible, but hysterically Egg realizes it's not enough. She's too small, he's too big, _oh gods they're gonna crash and he's gonna kill her-_

Egg screams when a white shadow descends upon them. He kicks and struggles at the jaws that snatch him up. Far too late does he realize the shape to be Father, and not the Stranger come to carry him away.

He dangles from Father's jaws like prey until he is lowered gently into the castle court. There Mother stands, white-faced and furious. It is she who tears down their boldness as reckless stupidity and arrogance, who rattles out their endless list of punishments. Father just looms, roaring and snarling until Egg's head rings from the noise, but never spits sparks.

While Egg gapes, it is Rhaena who bravely advances on their parents, looming over Mother with all the height she put in on her last growth spurt. "You gave up on Egg! While, if you won't help him find his fire than I sure as seven hells _will-"_

Father moves, butting Rhaena back. The fire building around her dies as she sprawls onto her back with a breathless huff.

Now is the time for Egg to find his fire, to rise in Rhaena's defense, to throw himself at their sire with fangs and flame of his own, and prove himself a true dragon.

But Egg shakes like a leaf beneath his father's wings, his blazing eyes. When Mother stonily repeats their punishments, he and Rhaena only nod, and slink off to their bedchambers.

Egg is forced into the training yard dawn to dusk, so sore and exhausted it's all he can do to collapse back into bed. When he sees Rhaena, it is always from a distance. He tries and fails to catch her eye. Her attention is fixed on Larissa Velaryon, the first female friend of many to captivate her.

Egg's not jealous, _he's not._ Rhaena will be his queen one day. Of course she needs to learn how to get along with ladies and command a court like Mother does. It's his job to learn how to fight and mete out law beside Father and Grandfather, to rule the kingdom as she does the castle.

* * *

With Grandfather dies Egg's name. He is Aegon now, the only one.

When the fires of the pyre gutter out, it is Aegon who must wade through the ashes to collect them for the scattering.

Now is the time to prove himself worthy of his namesake, to spread black wings of his own and commend the Conqueror to the skies.

Aegon can only swallow his envy and watch Father and Uncle Maegor, Rhaena and Aunt Visenya, ascend while he remains rooted to the ground with Mother, Serys, and the babies. Little Alysanne and Jaehaerys watch the dragons with wide eyes, too innocent to yet know the agony of being grounded.

Serys elbows him in the rubs. Startled, he glances over at his second brother, who rolls lilac eyes at him. "Spare me, Egg," he hisses. "We'll be up there when Aunt Visenya finally croaks."

Aegon bites back his smile, as Mother diplomatically pretends not to notice their whispering. "Well, that can't be very long at all, then."

Father transforms when he lands, retrieving Blackfyre from the remains of the pyre. The blade is Valyrian steel, and only shines with new light after a cleansing in dragonfire. Aegon is so busy admiring the blade he almost misses Father's quicksilver eyes burning into him.

"Aegon Targaryen," Father intones. "Kneel."

Aegon immediately obeys, a prince submitting to the dragon-king, a dutiful son to his sire. He does not shake when Blackfyre falls upon his shoulders and he is proclaimed as Aegon Targaryen, Prince of Dragostone, King Aenys' eldest son and heir.

"You are a rigorous student, my son, and Ser Addison Hill has only praise for your progress." The king's face lights up with the smallest trace of a smile. "I expect your training to only intensify, for your studies and your passions to grow stronger by the day. You must prove yourself worthy of Blackfyre, if you are to one day wield it in my stead, just as you shall wield the endless responsibilities of my crown."

Aegon promises.

Blackfyre is not a consolation prize to the pitiful prince that will never fly on his own wings. It is a vow, that he will one day prove himself a dragon-king too.

* * *

Aegon refuses to feel fear or dread, when he is at last wed to Rhaena, and their lives forever entwined. He radiates only love and joy and pride, for all the dreams at last coming to fruition.

Beneath the dark murmurs of the crowd, he stands only straighter when Rhaena transforms alone, casting the yard in her growing shadow. He wears the crown of the Prince of Dragonstone and Blackfyre as his royal raiment. Only those of the blood will ever know the sky, whether upon their own wings or those of another. Let the smallfolk jeer and whisper, that their prince must mount his own wife before their eyes. They will never know the warmth of scales beneath their touch, the smell of fire and smoke as intimately as he will.

A woman grown, far from the gangly girl she was six years prior, Rhaena ascends from King's Landing as the epitome of grace. She has come into herself, has reliably carried riders for years, publicly her favored female companions and secretly Aegon himself, to prepare themselves for this moment.

Rhaena circles the mouth of Blackwater Bay. They do not dare consummate their relationship in the seething cesspit of a town, but rather safely across the river, with trees to shade the sun and a bed of pine needles. They return only reluctantly for the wedding feast, where Father once more affirms them his heirs.

Aegon has little time to enjoy his relationship with Rhaena as husband and wife, before Father orders them on a royal progress of the realm. He wishes them to quell the unrest, to let the smallfolk know and love them as they once had himself and Mother.

Aegon tries to be the proper prince, he does, to make friends and stoically conquer all obstacles in his path like Grandfather before him. When the crowds jeer him as dragon-fucker and sister-fucker whenever he enters astride Rhaena, they put aside her wings to ride in on palfreys. At least then the crowds only boo at their incest, and not accuse him of bestiality.

At the outskirts of the Hightower lands, they are cornered in one village by a group of Poor Fellows that far outnumber their own party. Aegon endures their insults stoically and their clods of dirt with gritted teeth. He is a prince in command of himself, and unmoved by the bleating of sheep.

But Rhaena is a dragon, with a temper that flares hot and bright. Aegon jerks at the inhuman snarl at that escapes his sister, as their horses skitter nervously beneath them. Even those horses raised and trained alongside dragons have not been drilled out of their instinctual fears entirely.

"Sister," he hisses. "Control yourself."

"I'll show you control," she snaps at him.

Rhaena loves her beasts so, and dismounts her horse, thrusting her reins into the hands of a bewildered companion. Aegon tries keep his palfrey pacing beside her, even as she stalks through their party and the jeering Poor Fellows upon their hill.

"Rhaena, please-"

"What's the matter, sister-fucker?" calls one especially stupid Fellow. "Can't control your abomination of a bride?"

Rhaena roars. Aegon's horse startles. By the time he's reined it under control they're far enough for the flames to take his sister.

The dragon spreads out her pale-blue wings, catching those Poor Fellows not smart enough to flee at the first sparks in her shadow. With a thunderous bellow she looses a plume of blue-streaked flame above their heads. Aegon and their guards are quick to rally to her side, lest someone among the peasants thinks himself a dragonslayer. But their numbers break and scatter, with minimal bloodshed on the royal party's part.

Such ends their progress for Oldtown, to try changing the High Septon's minds on their own. Instead they turn for the Ocean Road and more hospitable audiences to the north. It is not the westermen that primarily burned upon the Field of Fire, or their ancestral dynasty incinerated.

* * *

Crakehall is close to the border with the wrathful Reach, disconcertingly so. Aegon does not intend to tarry there. Their delay is a necessity, when Rhaena swoons and near falls from her mount, and then retches from near everything the castle maester tries to offer her.

When they discover the reason why, Aegon weeps tears of joy and grief and rage. What should be the proudest day of their lives is overshadowed by the zealots that besiege Crakehall. The disciplined castle regiment can keep the rabble from their walls, but cannot break through. Lord Crakehall knows the only dragon behind his walls is ill, too ill to burn through the siege or simply fly away, taking the source of danger from his gates.

"Aegon," Rhaena murmurs hesitantly, as she clenches her fists to keep them from going to her belly. "There's nothing  _physically_ stopping me from... From being the dragon we need."

Aegon's hands tenderly encircle her belly, and what small, secret thing grows there. He presses a reverent kiss upon it. "This is the one great thing I have accomplished in my life, Rhae, aside from wedding you. I'm not letting those, those... _savages_ steal the most innocent life behind these walls."

They need not weather the siege forever. Any day now the White King and his army may fall upon this rabble with fire and blood, for daring to prey upon his children. Or, at the worst, in less than nine moons, when Rhaena has no need to bank the fires in her belly.

Aegon paces the parapets like a caged beast and whittles the practice dummies in the yard down to splinters with Blackfyre. He rages as only a man can, for a man is all he is. If the crowd breaks through the gates then, then...

All too soon, it seems, the siege lifts. The zealots do not flee from royal forces or burn in dragonfire. No. They trickle out, first as a stream, and then a steadily mounting flood pouring into the east. From the battlements Aegon watches them flee with dark suspicion, Rhaena's hand clinging to his.

"Have we found what new crusade drives them?" he demands Lord Crakehall, when his host finds them.

Lord Crakehall inclines his head, dark eyes watching his every move. "We have... Prince Aegon."

Aegon's eyes narrow, at the hesitation upon his title, but Rhaena clears her throat purposefully. "And, Lord Crakehall?"

"A voice has at last risen up among the rabble," Lord Crakehall says grimly. "They march to join Ser Horys Hill, a bastard hedge knight of some repute. He has called for a crusade upon King's Landing, to drive out the black beast that has claimed the city for his lair."

Rhaena's nails sink into his skin, and Aegon lets out a furious hiss that has their audience backing away. "Our gods damned uncle has returned to rip our realm apart, too? What news is there of our father on Dragonstone?"

"King Aenys is... dead, my prince. Or so the rumors claim. Maegor has claimed all the Seven Kings as his rightful heir."

Aegon chokes on tears, on shock, on rage. It boils, thick and furious, in him until it seems to spill out of his pores and-

Beyond the burning, there is screaming and shouting. Loudest of all, is Rhaena's roar, loud and thunderous. _"Egg, you fucking idiot!"_

With a grunt and scream, she pushes him from the walls into the courtyard below. Instinctively he twists around, throws out his arms...

...And his fall evens out into a glide.

He lands with a _whump_ in the yard below. Dazedly he shakes his head and gapes up at those on the walls gaping down at him. He inhales deeply, searching for the words... and snorts in disgust instead.

Why does everything around him suddenly smell so strongly of piss?

Rhaena lets out a sound half sobbing laugh and half roar of triumph. He throws back his head, and adds his song to hers.

At last, it sounds like it should.

* * *

Casterly Rock has hosted dragons before in their royal progresses. Always, they come from the sky, so that the folk of Lannisport might marvel at shimmering scales and tremble at the wings that shroud their city in shadow. Never do they ride anonymously through the streets on scruffy horses beneath travel-worn cloaks to beg sanctuary.

Beneath her men's clothes, Lyman Lannister recognizes the Princess of Dragonstone the moment she throws off her hood. He does not first notice her fine features or the silver-blonde hair tightly bound at the nape of her neck. No. He is enthralled by her eyes, that blaze with a brightness no sky can match. Despite the mysterious scarcity of her dragon form the past few moons her fire is alive and well.

No, it is her husband that catches Lyman's breath when the boy -man- throws off his own hood. His circlet shines proud and undaunted through silver-gold hair. The rumors are very much correct, for Aegon Targaryen is very much the splitting image of his namesake, the Conqueror in his prime. Their only notable difference is in eye color. Lyman will never forget the Black Dread's eyes, black as obsidian, or the rumors that scathingly reported his grandson to have eyes of lilac and a fire as strong.

As a man Aenys Targaryen had been a genial and unassuming one, with only the striking silver of his eyes revealing his true soul. In the face of the Conqueror Lyman sees the eyes of the White King, though perhaps more a pale blue than true quicksilver.

So _that_ rumor from Crakehall about the Wyrmking's wrathful shade had been true after all.

Lyman grants the prince and princess the refuge of guest right. He suspects they'll need it a long while, even before Jocasta points out in private Rhaena is expecting.

Even when Maegor's missives to give up his rebel relatives grow blunter and more ominous, Lyman remains just as genial and steadfast in his refusals.

Rhaena and Aegon are courteous guests at first, though at times they stretch the definition. The solemn lion in repose gains a rather odd white cub, when Aegon unfurls his wings and his full power. His first flights around Casterly Rock are short, wobbly tests. Only weeks go by does he circle Lannisport and venture out to the islands in the harbor, yet always within sight of his anxious wife watching him like a hawk from the balconies. The staff give Princess Rhaena a respectable birth. Even without her fire she is a dragon and a dragon-mother most certainly carrying twins thrice as formidable as her husband.

"I suppose our prince has not been hiding competence from us for years," Jocasta muses one night, as she traces circles upon his chest. "Aenys was more a natural in the air than on the dance floor when he visited Tarbeck Hall, and he was a boy of eight then."

"A dragon for five years, even then," Lyman observes grimly. "And his boy has not been five moons."

His wife traces another shape upon his chest, elliptical like an egg. "Casterly Rock is such a fine home for dragons, is it not?"

Lyman hums. "Near as large as the Dragonmont, and thrice as grand. Our furnaces can make it just as warm, should it please them."

They consider their eldest boy and his new bride, her gleeful admission to Jocasta that she has missed her moon's blood for the first time since their marriage. Near of an age with those little babes in Rhaena's belly, one might say, as close in age and bond as Aenys and Alyssa Targaryen.

Rhaena and Aegon are both Aenys' children, after all, and know the benefits their father reaped when he so generously rewarded those who stamped down rebellion in his first year of reign. That is why some lords across the kingdoms hold themselves back, when they might otherwise pledge themselves to Maegor or the High Septon's calls to slay every dragon on their shores. They consider babes that might grow up with Casterly Rock as their first home, and lions as their playmates.

Lyman's father had certainly had the right of it in bowing to the dragons and sacrificing his crown to keep his name and castle. Loren Lannister had lived in simpler times, with half the dragons only one side he need bow down to. Maegor swallows cities in his shadow and the Bronze Queen more than twice his age, a living colossus. Perhaps she might rethink her reticence in besieging the Rock, when her bulk might break it.

When little Aerea and Rhaella Targaryen are born, the Lannister prayers come true, Lyman banks his joy even when Rhaena first takes to the skies and roars her return for all of Lannisport. It is the day his guests stop being his guests, and demand his right as vassal.

"I am honored at your faith in me, your graces," Lyman announces neutrally. "But, please, consider all I have risked in sheltering you and your family all these months. The High Septon makes rumbles of excommunicating me for not throwing you and your daughters out to the same mobs burning their way through my lands. Then there is, of course, the matter of certain relatives of yours that might do their burning far more efficiently."

Aegon and Rhaena fixate him with burning eyes. "You support your rightful monarchs, Lord Lyman. Surely _that_ tips the odds in your favor, when it is two dragons against two?"

"I was not aware dragons started shrinking at a certain age, your graces," he answers blankly. "We both know not even the Rock can stand against Visenya, should she wish to have her glory at last. I cannot in good conscience commit my people to an unchallenged man of such a young age, when he faces an uncle and great-aunt bloodied by the worst wars to have yet wracked the Seven Kingdoms. Prove yourself a _dragon,_ your grace, a true champion to rally my banners behind, and I shall pledge them to you."

Aegon's face flushes, but Rhaena puts her hand over his clenched fist, before she curves her lips to Lyman. The expression cannot be called a smile. "So we shall, Lord Lyman. When we win our throne, we will remember this and all of your other... kindnesses. Such generosity does not go unrewarded."

"I pray that may be so, your grace."

Rhaena and Aegon debate in private, but arguing dragons have little room for secrecy even if their chambers did not have a dozen ears. They hiss at each other in Valyrian and outright snarl at each other.

In the end, they fly off together with the Piper forces and a promise of amassing a true army at Pinkmaiden. Despite no official sanction from their lord, some fool sons of Lannisport are idealistic enough to follow, enchanted by the shadow of dragons. With them marches Tyler Hill, Lyman's own bastard, and five hundred men that have no official approval whatsoever.

Their little princesses, they entrust to Lyman.

It's a start. So too does it warn how few safe havens they have at their disposal.

Jocasta writes to Tarbeck Hall, her idealistic, glory-hungry nephew Alyn. His banners are among the first to arrive at Pinkmaiden Castle, alongside the Lannister lion. Even if it need be reversed for Tyler Hill's bastard banners.

* * *

At Pinkmaiden Castle fifteen thousand men gather beneath their White Prince. He is near his sire's mirror image, though his pale scales are tinted more blue than silver. He attracts mostly westermen and rivermen. They are sickened by the ravages of rogue zealots and Maegor's impetuous cruelties. When the White Prince denounces his uncle as tyrant and usurper, and vows a reign as prosperous and triumphant as that of his namesake, many are eager to listen.

For fifteen thousand brave souls, the choice between a Beast King and a White Prince is an obvious one, their campaign like the stuff of songs. Some come as far from the north and Vale, and are a sure sign that more will follow, once their prince proves himself a king.

Few mutter it is an ill omen when Aegon flies at the head of his army alone, while Rhaena, stonily-faced, watches them march out for their first true test. The soldiers near unanimously agree the battlefield is no place for a woman, even one armored in scales and armed with fire, as they give Melony Piper pointed glances. She is a new mother, and should be home with her new babes. Perhaps she hangs back, already pregnant with her husband's son and heir.

The White Prince is an inexperienced commander, with a dragon's defiance. When his commanders suggest dividing his forces to take on Maegor's three factions before they can unite, he stonily denies them. He will not have his men divided and picked apart, as has happened to his father's forces at the beginning of his reign, as his bitch of an aunt poisoned his sire when he and Rhaena were away.

Aegon finds Ser Davos Darklyn's forces from King's Landing sitting on high ground, with those of the royalist riverlords to the north and reachermen from the south advancing upon them.

"We'll charge the hill first," Aegon commands, armored in white dragonscale, his crown a circlet and Blackfyre at his side. "We'll shatter those bastards before their forces can converge."

Such are the last words he gives, for a heartbeat later he transforms the final time, and heads the charge himself. As a dragon-king should.

From the south, above the armies of the Reach, flies a beast of black and bronze. His roar is thunder, and Aegon's forces falter. Maegor is more than twice his nephew's age, and his monstrous form near thrice his size.

Undaunted, the White Prince lets out a battle cry of his own, and surges forward brave as a hero.

Maegor bears down on him from above. He snags Aegon by one wing and _rips._

The battle near freezes at the sound of a dragon's scream, that shatters the air like squealing steel. One wing ripped from his body the White Prince falls and falls.

Even before the White Prince breaks his neck in his fatal fall, his army breaks, and are slaughtered in their flight from the field. Four lords of reputable houses are among the dead, alongside their sons and daughters, for Melony Piper's corpse is later recovered from the field.

So dies Aegon Targaryen, the Dragon Too Late.


	6. The Beast King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Maegor Targaryen, the Beast King.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon typical unpleasantness when it comes to Maegor. Much of his later life is framed by those around him.

Maegor is born in his brother's shadow. It does not matter how he comes into the world healthy and squalling, twice his brother's size at birth - Aenys is already a dragon flying on his own wings, the son of the idealized Silver Queen, immortalized forever while his own mother lives to be judged and derided by those beneath them. It's just him and her, for moons at a time, sequestered away on Dragonstone while Father shows off Aenys to the realm.

It's the way Maegor likes it, just him and his mother. His father is like the Dragonmont, black and expressionless. His brother is a sniveling worm. The courtiers press in too tightly around him, natter in his ears for endless hours, and drive him to lash out as a dragon should. All those stupid boys that go running off to their mothers with bruises and bite marks should have known better than to taunt a dragon in his den.

Even before his own fire wakes Maegor proves himself a dragon, again and again, everything his brother is not. It is Maegor who grows tall and strong, where Aenys is forever thin and reedy. Aenys sings and stares dreamily up the stars, bows and scrapes to the sheep at court. Maegor is the dragon's son. What use is debate, when he is powerful enough to force the other side into agreement? While Aenys trips over his own tail as a boy of three, Maegor first picks up a blade, and proves himself a natural.

Maegor is a boy of seven, when he first drives his blade of blunted steel half way through the training dummy. Chest heaving from the exertion, he surveys his show of strength with fierce pride, and looks to his mother.

Bronze eyes fierce, her lips quirk ever so slightly, like a bit of sun peaking through gray clouds. "A promising start, my son. Now, can you decapitate it in _one_ blow?"

Mother is a dragon, and mother dragons do not coddle their babes. No, they push their children ever higher, to breathe their flames ever hotter.

Maegor pleases Mother. He does not make her _proud,_ not like how Father smiles for Aenys.

It's an accident, when Maegor finally manages to do so. He is a boy of eight in the stables, trying to pick out a mount, when he wanders behind a new palfrey from the Reach. The fine black mare is striking, a gift from some reacher lord, and utterly useless as a royal mount. Targaryen horses are foaled where dragon scent is strong, acclimated at birth to carry a rider of the blood. But this stupid nag startles when he passes behind her. Too late does he notice the hoof until it strikes him squarely in the chest, sending him sprawling onto his back.

Dragons do not weep. His cheeks aren't burning with pain and disgrace, _they aren't!_ It's fury, hot and horrible, that sings through its veins.

With a roar Maegor springs upon the palfrey, and has his vengeance with fire and blood. Its agonized screams are near as sweet as the salty blood that pools in his mouth when he bites down, again and again.

Something small skitters to a halt in the corner of his eye. Reflexively he rounds upon it, and unleashes a jet of flame.

His target does not scream like a horse, high and shrill. It screams like a little boy, younger than Maegor himself.

Maegor, reeling in shock, tries to back away. It's hard to move, as he keeps tripping over parts of himself that didn't exist before. His heart thunders at the horses bugling in their stalls, and the shouts of the servants pressing closer by the second. Beyond the stable entrance he spots blue sky. Despite his awkward body, he barrels his way through the chaos, toward what his instincts insist as freedom.

When he reaches the open courtyard, he throws opens his arms to-

"Maegor!"

He freezes on instinct. He sinks to the ground, low and trembling as Mother descends upon him, and braces for her wrath. Yet it is not fury upon her face, when she takes his face in both hands, turning it this way and that as she expects him like the stable master does the prized stallions.

Mother laughs, sweet and triumphant, before she beams. It lights up her face, makes her more beautiful than fierce. "Maegor. My son, my dragon."

He hums in contentment, leaning into her touch. That day his heart soars higher than he ever will on wings alone.

Later, when he has fallen and bled and burned to master the transformation and his dragon form, Mother holds a mirror to his true face. Already it is strong, like Mother and Father's, its black scales burnished bronze when the light hits just so. His eyes are a molten bronze, brighter than even his mother's. He looks like his parents, both of them, the best of them.

Maegor sees nothing of his brother in him, but he's glad for that. Aenys has always been a scrawny, sniveling worm.

When they triumphantly return to court, Father agrees with Mother the time has come for him to squire too. He is granted to Ser Tarvys, the grizzled master-at-arms of Dragonstone, who is of the blood himself.

* * *

Thirteen is a very good year for Maegor, one of the best in his life. It begins when Mother finally grants him Dark Sister on his name day, a gift that eclipses even what the Conqueror can offer. It's traditionally the blade of the Ladies of Dragonstone, with a slender blade, but it is still a weapon forged in the fires of Old Valyria. Blackfyre is the sword of the dragonlord, the sword of kings, that Maegor may have to pry out of his brother's cold, dead hands one day. But there's time enough for that.

Just because Dark Sister is Blackfyre's slimmer counterpart does not stop it from being Valyrian steel. With it he defeats his first hardened knights in the melee and proves himself a man by the strength of his feats, like a dragon amongst the dragonlords of old.

Thirteen is the year he strides down the aisle of the Starry Sept, where his father was formally crowned, to claim his betrothed as his own. Maegor smugly notes how all of the Conqueror's Sept could squarely within this interior. There are more than twice the number of guests for him than there was for the wedding of Aenys to Alyssa. _Aenys_ did not get married with a Valyrian blade at his side.

Ceryse Hightower is not of the blood, as Mother has bitterly complained time and time again. Maegor is secretly glad of it. He has grown up among the blushing serving girls of Dragonstone, with blue-violet eyes and moon-pale hair. His bride is striking for hair long and rich as honey, with eyes dark as oak. She is a full woman, with all the curves and swells that sets his blood alight.

She is not his little niece, who skews up her face and cries into her mother's breast when he comes too close.

Maegor's chest swells when he strips the Hightower cloak from Ceryse's shoulders, to drape the dragon of black and red over her. She is his now, a mother to his own dragons.

He is tall enough to look down at his wife, a woman grown, and gentles his face for her. "Don't worry, wife. I'll not drop you."

"I trust you fully, my lord husband," she says sweetly. "But this is not the ride I'll enjoy most tonight."

Maegor admires her bravado. Beneath her honeysuckle perfume she stinks of fear, even to the weak nose of his human form. He'll train her from her fear soon enough, when she realizes how exhilarating flight can be.

The stink of the crowd only amplifies when he transforms. Snorting in disgust, he lowers himself as far as he'll deign to the filthy streets, and nudges her atop him. He's never carried a passenger before, but thrusts himself into the air as if Ceryse is not even there.

Ceryse tries hard to keep her composure, but she can't fool Maegor's senses. Her breaths come short and shallow. He rumbles, pleased. His first flight astride his mother was just as thrilling, even if the Whispering Sound does not offer the same dramatic views as circling Dragonstone. If this vantage point is so enthralling to her, then he supposes what is to come must make her blood boil as hot as his does.

Maegor lowers his head and holds nothing back in his speed. The sooner they complete this damned ceremony, the sooner they can claim the true victory of the night.

Father has recommended they consummate out on a private island in the sound if he's feeling especially urgent, or else wait until they reach the Hightower and head down to the chambers awaiting them at the top. As the burning beacon grows from a distant sun to a refreshing inferno, a far more exciting idea hatches.

The Hightower is Westeros' answer to the wonders of long-lost Valyria, the tallest structure on the continent, one that stands above even the Wall. A seat worthy of dragons.

Maegor lands, impatiently nudging a shaking Ceryse off him so that he might transform. Clad in only the armor sewn from his own scales, he smirks at her. "Congratulations, wife. You are now only the second human woman alive to claim the honor of dragon-rider."

She manages a smile. "I am honored, my prince, but more eager for the honors that await us below."

He closes the gap between them, rumbling with eager pride. "Who says we must wait so long, wife? Why not make our first on the roof on the world?"

Ceryse laughs, giddy with the thought, and hitches up what's left of her skirt. Before the eyes of the spluttering sentries, in full sight of the gods themselves, Maegor pulls her down to seal his rights.

* * *

Alys Harroway is her father's oldest daughter, his prettiest. Even before he was granted Harrenhal, when cramped Harroway Tower was their only castle, she has dreamed of wedding a gallant knight, a red-haired Tully or golden Piper destined to become a great lord, and she his lady love. In her wildest fancies she imagined herself Aegon Targaryen's bride. Dragons only marry dragons, and the prince has not yet proved himself one.

When Alys is scarcely sixteen, one of her dreams becomes reality. Father smiles and smugly lets her in on why he has been so secretive these past few weeks - Alys shall be a princess after all, and soon.

Her groom is not Prince Aegon, not even Prince Viserys. They are only boys, pretty in their youth. Prince Maegor is a man grown, with broad shoulders and bulging neck. Alys, who has dreamed of slender and supple youth, shivers at the thought of such a man astride her. She tells herself it must be excitement, for soon she'll be a princess, a dragon's bride.

Not his _only_ bride, of course. There is still sour old Ceryse Hightower to consider, for King Aenys and the High Septon refuse to annul a barren marriage.

"That is what you are for, my sweet," her father croons. "One of seven healthy children by your mother, Seven rest her soul, and a proper age for a bride. Give him a child, and he shall give you the world."

"Yes, Father," Alys dutifully says. She will be a princess, a mother to dragons, just like Alyssa Velaryon. There is only place left in the world where one might marry a dragon.

From Harrenhal Alys is shipped downstream, through the Gods Eye and down the Blackwater Rush. She scarcely has a chance to see King's Landing before she is bundled abroad a proper ship, and sent out to Dragonstone. Once there Alys is made to mount a pony by several of the silver-haired smallfolk called dragonseeds. There are many such folk in Harrenhal's vicinity, for Gargon the Guest and his sire had wholeheartedly believed in the right of first night.

Alys has dreamed of the Starry Sept or, more realistically, the beautiful sept in Maidenpool. She is not even married in the Conqueror's Sept, where King Aenys took his queen to wife. The Seven do not recognize second marriages, and Targayens recognize no will but their own.

On the back of the Dragonmont, her wedding chapel a cavern, Alys casts off her traveling cloak to reveal a passable gown. Her father is not here, but he has sent his wedding cloak, the very same he draped over her mother's shoulders. She wears it proudly, and does not tremble when she marches into the cavern to face the dragons.

Her groom looms like the Smith incarnate, for not even the Warrior would have such brutally handsome features. He is garbed in armor of his own black scales, Dark Sister and his circlet of Valyrian steel his only adornments. His molten eyes burn through the gloom and the torches their humble witnesses hold, if only for Alys's sake. Aside from that he looks.

The Dowager Queen is not so young, and the truth of her blood shows more readily. Visenya Targaryen is not the glorious Warrior Queen Alys knows from portraits and illustrations. She is near seventy, what wisps of her she has left pale silver. Far brighter are the bronze scales that shimmer in the torchlight, that creep from her armor into the flesh of her face and hands. If they can still be called hands, for their fingers are nauseatingly long and webbed.

When she falls beneath Visenya's gaze, Alys tilts up her chin, and looks the dragon in the eye. She has nothing to fear from her good-mother, for she will be the mother of her grandsons and granddaughters. She will give Maegor twelve children, double what Alyssa Velaryon could give Aenys, if that is what it takes to prove her place.

Alys knows the Andal wedding vows by heart, for she has attended the weddings of many cousins and fantasized a dozen times more about her own. There is no septon here, only Visenya, and she chants in High Valyrian. She speaks the tongue as it was meant to be spoken, in the mouths of true dragons. Alys clutches Maegor's hand tighter at the strange and sibilant tone, beautiful in its own way. She can scarce understand High Valyrian in a human mouth, and from the dragon it is only gibberish.

Despite the heat of the Dragonmont Alys shivers when her mother's cloak is stripped from her shoulders, the crimson dragon draped over her back. It is an Andal touch to a Valyrian rite, but she clings to the scrap of familiarity in all this strangeness.

_"I... I shall grant you sons, lord husband,"_ she recites. She has practiced it again and again on the boat ride over here. _"The gods smile on us."_

Something in her husband's stony face softens. _"It is dragons I need of you, wife. First, you must fly."_

Alys knows what comes next. She backs close to Visenya as she dares, while Maegor strides toward the cavern's mouth. His bulk swallows the stars, and presses her anxiously to the wall.

Alys is a princess now, a dragon-bride. She still whoops like a little girl in the one lap Maegor takes around the Dragonmont. Flying is exhilarating. What must come after, not so much.

By the time the Dragonguard realizes what has happened, it is too late. She and Maegor are smug in their victory. She is a wife, wedded and bedded, with the blood staining her marriage cloak as proof. All of it is from the consummation, whether torn by Maegor's passionate claws or when Alys accidentally cut herself upon his spikes in dismounting him.

King Aenys is furious, of course, but there's nothing he can do about it. Alys is family now. Gods willing, she might already have his little nephew growing in her belly. So she stands tall as the Conqueror's sons rumble like thunder, and does not shake. Visenya has granted one of her own gowns to wear, somber and black like a true martial queen, and not frivolous like a girl's dress. The Dowager Queen does not have much for gowns anymore.

Alys hopes for mercy. For all the Wyrmking growls like a dragon he bends like a worm. Now, however, he finds his backbone. "So long as I live, you won't make a laughingstock out of my house. Set your Alys aside, or leave. Forever."

Ser Addison and his Kingsguard close in, step by step. Now, beneath the long sleeves of her dress, Alys clutches her fists. Will she be made a widow after a day?

"As my king commands," Maegor hisses at last.

Alys cannot help her shriek of surprise when he barrels from the room, taking off a door from its post in his rush for the sky. His brother thunders off in hot pursuit.

Yet Alys is not forsaken. Her good-mother stalks protectively to her side, when the Kingsguard turn hesitantly to her.

"You will not detain my good-daughter and I, will you?" Visenya asks, tongue lisping against her onyx fangs.

Ser Addison Hill grudgingly lowers his blade, retreating with his men. "Of course not, my queen."

Alys Targaryen strides out Dragonstone proud as a princess, hands purposefully held to her belly. She is a true princess, truer than that barren bitch languishing in Dragonstone.

When court beyond them, Visenya flares her nostrils. Her bronze eyes are gentle as a dragon's can be. "Perhapsss, good-daughter, perhapsss not. It isss far too early to tell."

"The gods smile on me, good-mother, the old and the new," Alys murmurs, with a dreamy smile. "If she is a girl we will name her for you, and raise her to make you proud."

Visenya promises that Maegor shall send for her once she is settled. Then she is bundled onto a ship bound for Maidenpool, to await further news.

It is not long before Alys is summoned to court. She goes fearlessly. The Bronze Queen is her vigilant guardian, circling overhead. Visenya is so many times larger than Aenys and Princess Rhaena put together.

Hesitantly, the herald announces her as Lady Alys, no surname given. Her blood boils even before King Aenys looks at her like some orphaned peasant.

"I am not to be pitied, your grace," she says coldly. "I am your good-sister, the mother of your kin."

Her moon's blood has already come.

"My brother's... madness need not be your own," Aenys murmurs gently. "The wedding was not legitimate, and doubly so if he took you against your will."

"We were wed in the Valyrian rite, the very same your grace's own royal parents observed," Lady Alys says coldly. Visenya has told her this, for Queen Rhaenys had been a second wife, wed only because she had been a dragon too. "We would happily accept a second ceremony in the eyes of the new gods, if their septons so honor us, but they refused a reasonable annulment from a barren wife."

Aenys sighs. "Dear girl, do not believe yourself shackled to him. Your mistake can be forgiven, any sin absolved. I know a dozen good men that would vie for your hand, in a marriage blessed by the Seven."

Alys clenches her fists until her palms ache. Such groomsmen are doddering petty lords that have killed three wives already with their seed, or ambitious knights that will ever grasp at the scraps their king throws them. "I am no whore, your grace," she chokes out. "My favor cannot be bought by the highest bidder. I am Princess Alys Targaryen, and I am loyal to my husband."

Aenys guilty averts his eyes, and she is free to go.

Dragons do not concern themselves with the bleating of wind, so Alys holds her head high through the rumors. Words are wind, and dragons rule that too.

Her lack of a pregnancy proves a blessing when a messenger at last arrives from Pentos. There is nothing to hold her back from immediately jumping aboard.

Pentos is populous as Oldtown and even grander, which by default makes it ten times more glorious than King's Landing. Her husband does not own a castle there. No, his manse is palatial, with little though to walls and fortifications. Such defenses are left for those that surround grounds extensive enough for a dragon his size to stretch out, and graze the herds needed to keep his belly filled.

Those two years are the best of Alys's life. There is still not yet a child, but there instead comes Tyanna. Maegor found her before Alys's arrival. She is a magister's natural daughter, with a bit of dragon blood herself. Her eyes are a dark and lovely violet, her hair locks of ebony curls.

Alys should consider her a rival, but Tyanna is a friend, nearer and dearer than one of her own sisters. Maegor, gods bless him, is not one for grace and good humor. Tyanna has them in spades. She trained as a tavern dancer and then a courtesan. She speaks five tongues, including Common and High Valyrian and two Free City dialects aside from Pentoshi. She is fluent in the humor of all five, where Maegor has not yet mastered one. Most fascinating of all, Tyanna knows some alchemy, some things almost like magic. The tricks she shows Alys seem magical than Maegor.

In Pentos, when he is not yet so impatient, there are times when Maegor can be almost tender, treat the marriage bed as something than another task to be conquered. When Alys need rest, Tyanna is there to share her burden. On the rare nights when the dragon deign not visit them, they might share a bed together, for thanks to him it is hard to sleep alone without shivering for heat. Tyanna's poultices soothe even the deepest bites and scratches Maegor leaves behind. Her clever fingers and clever tongue at least give their marriage a bit of passion like that Alys has dreamed of.

It matters not that Tyanna is not yet an official wife. She is Alys's sister-wife in all but name, closer to her than that bitch in Oldtown. One of them shall bare Visenya, and the other Daemion, for Maegor considers the name Aegon sullied by his nephew. One day their children shall marry, and join all three of their lines forever. Alys does not mind baring a daughter, if her little girl shall count Tyanna for her good-mother.

When the Bronze Queen herself flies over Pentos with news of Aenys's death, Maegor flies off with her to claim his crown, but not with one last final attempt at securing his succession.

Neither conceives, but Alys does not mind. She and Tyanna have each other in their blissful corner of paradise, without a dragon to darken their door. In those weeks their husband is a distant thought to both of them. He is a mighty dragon, and his mother even mightier. Between them the Wyrmking's children are serpents easily crushed.

Alys is giddy when a breathless herald arrives with a letter from King's Landing. At last their husband beckons them home, to make them his rightful queens.

The handwriting is not his own. Visenya no longer writes, but the harsh voice that dictated this letter can only be hers. Alys swoons to discover Maegor, her dragon, comatose. Tyanna's strong arms catch her before she falls.

"Our husband lost to _seven_ men with swords," she murmurs in a voice that always sends shivers down her sister-wife's spine. "Why did he not burn them all alive?"

"It's a stupid superstition that he indulged in," Alys huffs. "He should have just burned them and be done with it!" Why indulge the Warrior's Sons now, when the zealots had refused to ever acknowledge their rightful marriage? Desperate for steadiness, she grips Tyanna's hands. "Tya, can you save him?"

Tyanna squeezes back. In her dark violet eyes, Alys finds love, and the promise of salvation.

Queen Alys Targaryen returns to her kingdom triumph, the king's savior at her side. Visenya, with minimal questioning, cedes Maegor's care into Tyanna's capable hands.  With one last tender kiss to her son's head, she flings herself from the window, and circles the keep as their vigilant shadow.

Not even three days under Tyanna's care, Maegor wakes. He presses a kiss to her palm, and Alys's, before he rasps for food and water. He near eats and drinks his weight.

Even as news of the king's recovery spreads far and wide, Visenya never descends to embrace her son and ask after him personally. Grief shudders over Maegor's face as he realizes the truth, before his stoic facade reasserts itself.

"I don't understand," Alys murmurs in private, beyond their husband's range of hearing. "He's safe now, and her son. Why can't she spend a few moments at his side?"

Tyanna arches her brow. "Because she _cannot,"_ she repeats.

Alys shudders as she recalls her last memories of Visenya's human form, if it could have even been called that. She hopes Maegor will abandon their bed long before his inner dragon starts bleeding through. It is already painful enough when is limited to blunt nails and human teeth.

Against the advice of every maester, Maegor snarls and fights his way up from his sickbed. He still looms over every man present, despite his frame being somewhat withered from thirty days comatose.

When the Black King first takes wing again, it is to burn the Sept of Remembrance and its Warrior's Sons as his sire once had Harrenhal. His archers massacre every last man that attempts to escape the blaze. Alys trembles with pride when he roars his victory for all the city to hear, and the Bronze Queen bellows her allegiance to him.

Still, Maegor will not yet raise Tyanna to Alys's equal. First he burns the Faith Militant at Stonebridge and the Great Fork, to ensure the survivors are suitably humbled. He executes the Grand Maester and a dozen septons before he finds one sensible enough to perform the ceremony. Alys and Visenya stand as proud witnesses.

Maegor flies Tyanna once around the circumference of King's Landing, before he claims upon the Hill of Rhaenys and the scorched borders of its Sons. Alys winces in sympathy, when she later helps her new scrub the ash from her skin. The claw marks are not so easily removed.

The suicidal High Septon is determined to have all the Faithful burn with him, when he still insists on 'the abomination and his whores,' even when Ceryse Hightoer insists herself to be the one true queen. So Maegor and his mother raze some more houses to ash, those of rivermen and westermen that refused to heed his summons.

Yet, so does Maegor build, to raise up a legacy upon the ashes of his brother's. He adds dungeons and secret passages to the fledgling Red Keep, even more sturdy turrets capable of supporting a grown dragon's weight, and room in the yard to shelter them. Yet the Red Keep is already part-way built, with mostly men in mind. So upon the Hill of Rhaenys Maegor orders the ground broken upon a Dragonkeep, so that his children might loom high over all the city without ever assuming human form.

When the High Septon once more demands Maegor bow to him and beg for penance, at last the dragon's wrathful eye turns for Oldtown. Both of his queens he adds to the procession, for he still insists upon trying for children whenever he gets a chance. Alys is excited for a close-up view of the fires, to see the haughty High Septon humbled at last.

"He was against me from the very beginning," she hisses to Tyanna in the comfort of their bed. "He cursed my marriage, and yours as well, with all his spite."

"Death pays for life," Tyanna murmurs, before she smiles. "Perhaps we shall conceive our first children upon Oldtown's ashes."

Alys smirks. The High Septon and Ceryse Hightower, who is most undoubtedly the source of 'the whore of Harroway' and 'the king's raven.' Two thorns out of their sides, for two little dragons in their bellies.

She hopes Tyanna's child will inherit her lovely eyes, or at least show the color in their scales.

There is no comeuppance. The High Septon dying in his 'sleep' robs Maegor of his vengeance, when the new one passively anoints him as king and does not bat an eye when he executes or exiles every last Warrior's Son in Oldtown. Maegor lingers at Oldtown for half a year to preside over the trials personally. Spilling blood with Dark Sister always excites him, and so Tyanna and Alys both endure a frequent visitor to their beds.

So do they enjoy the return of Ceryse, their sister-wife. It is cold comfort that Maegor at least refuses to declare her senior wife, when she has long spurned her sisters without ever once providing him an heir.

"The bitch is near forty, and barren as Old Valyria," Alys rants, when neither Maegor nor Ceryse can hear. They are much too loud in their passions. "How can he possibly hope she'll conceive now?"

"She never will," Tyanna declares serenely. Alys smirks. Her Tya can make it so. "But for now she serves a purpose. Every night our king spends with her is _our night."_

For the time being, it is enough.

Prince Aegon, the Dragon Too Late, finds his wings at last and loses them in his first true battle. Maegor not only slays his nephew, but tears his body apart until his natural magics loosen, and release Blackfyre. So does their husband become Maegor the Cruel and the Beast King, to slay his own blood in so brutal a manner. To spare her remaining children, Alyssa Velaryon comes without a fight, her three youngest in tow.

His reign secured, Maegor once more focuses on the future. "Both blades of our line, returned to me," he remarks at a night, when he and all his wives pretend to be a happy family. "If only I had children to bestow them to."

The next night when the king aggressively claims his rights with Ceryse, Alys flees to Tyanna in tears. She does not hesitate to confide in her sister-wife. None can eavesdrop on Tyanna without her say-so. She weeps freely into Tyanna's arms, as she clutches her desperately in the dark.

"Is your father mad?" she hisses. "To cuckold a _dragon_ with peasants is-"

"Dragonseeds," Alys corrects bitterly. "There's plenty enough around Harrenhal, considering Gargon and his sire. Quenton Qoherys was distant blood to the Conqueror. Those he recruited from Driftmark and Dragonstone are definitely much closer. At least one might be Maegor's uncle, if Lord Aerion's reputation is anything to go by."

"Yes," Tyanna snarls. "Because one spark into an ocean lifts the odds of a dragon from impossible to _infinitesimal."_

"'Better dragon blood than no dragon at all.'" Alys parrots cynically. "Like that served the last Aegon so well, when Jaehaerys is as much a dragon as Maegor was!"

For an eternity, her sister-wife is silent. "Perhaps... there is a way, for you to have your son."

Alys whips her head around, digging her fingers into thick tresses. "Tell me."

"It's old magic," Tyanna begins hesitantly. "Valyrian. I learned what I could from the old women of the islands. Doubtless our good-mother knows more, but she is not exactly in a position to inform me of much. It was made for conceiving children from _human_ parents. Dragon blood always makes these rituals more volatile, but I think I figured a way around t-"

With a squeal of delight, Alys squeezes her. "Yes, Tya! Whatever it takes!"

Her wife pulls away, brow furrowing. "Alys, this is theoretical! There might be no child at all. I might render you barren or kill you in the birth!"

Alys frowns back. "You said you had to alter the ritual because of Maegor's blood, yes?" Tyanna glumly nods. "It's not as if there's any one else to test it on, is there? Only Ceryse." They both scowl at this. The last thing that bitch needs is a miracle child to prove herself forever in the right.

"There's myself," Tyanna concedes. "I have a drop of the blood myself. Not _Targaryen,_ but another of the Forty Families'. Perhaps it increases the chances of conception."

"Or kills _you_ instead." Alys squeezes her hands, silencing her protest with a kiss. "Whatever it takes, Tya. Grant me my child, so that you can have yours."

* * *

Before Tyanna even begins on that concoction, first she mixes something far more innocent. Some of Braavos' closely-kept secrets of resisting the dragonlords have leaked out over the centuries, scentless poisons not even a dragon can detect. Far less harmful is one variation of that compound that tweaks a dragon's sense of smell ever so slightly. Maegor sniffs at the fragrant perfume two of his sister-wives make fashionable in the court, and thinks little of it. Only then does Tyanna begin work on the far more dangerous part of the plan.

Alys takes that feckless, foul-smelling potion one dusk before the dragon is due. Three weeks later, she misses her moon's blood. Maegor notices nothing.

They wait three anxious moons, gradually weaning themselves off that perfume, before Alys announces she is expecting. They have quietly waited through the most perilous time of the pregnancy, so as not to incite Maegor's fury at a miscarriage. At three moons, mother and child prove hardy enough for the secret to at last be revealed.

Tyanna is relieved they took the right course of action, for right after the maester confirms her pregnancy Maegor orders Alys confined to bed. She is allowed her sisters and sweetmeat, bards and cards, and not a single enjoyment that can't be enjoyed from bed rest.

For three moons, Tyanna and Alys curl up in the rare times they have together, pulling faces at Maegor's over-protectiveness and daydreaming about what they shall do when Alys has her freedom and a babe in her arms. When the babe quickens, they spend hours with their hands pressed to their child, and grinning at its kicks and punches.

The doomed day begins ordinary enough, with Tyanna curled by Alys's side, and Jeyne and Hanna Harroway close by, peering at their playing cards. Then Alys's belly throbs, too early and too violent to be false labor. When Tyanna pulls her hand away from the bed, it is red and sticky.

Tyanna is pushed from the room, as the two septas and the midwife assert control. The septas mistrust Tyanna's faith, and the midwife simply mistrust Tyanna. It is Jeyne and Hanna that most comfort their sister while hysterical girls themselves, while Tyanna races for a higher authority.

By the time Maegor thrusts his way inside, with her at his heels, the nightmare has unfurled. Alys lays unconscious, pale and spent. Her son is a monster, eyeless and twisted, with long, overstretched arms and three curved fingers for hands.

Overtaken by black rage, Maegor demands all of Alys's caretakers executed, sparing only her sisters.

Tyanna spends those first terrifying hours at Alys's side. She believes she knows true horror.

Then Alys, delirious, begins to _ramble._ Some of it is utter nonsense. Some of it dangerously close to the truth, truths only Alys and Tyanna know.

Tyanna seeks out her king. She finds him perched in the Iron Throne, the severed hand of Grand Maester Desmond in his hands, snarling that _abomination_ could not be his.

Two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.

"Y-Your grace, I am afraid I have a secret I must confess to you..."

Maegor is a fickle beast. When she affirms the child cannot truly be his, for Alys has surely slept with so many other men of confirmed fertility, he refuses to believe her without proof. Tyanna thus reveals twenty names, carefully tracked down and monitored since Lucas Harroway proved fool enough to cuckold a dragon. With enough persuasion, most men not only admit they were propositioned to sleep with their queen, but did so.

Maegor orders Alys dragged from her bed. He turns her over to Tyanna, before he descends upon House Harroway with fire and blood. It is what he would have done any way, when he had inevitably learned of Lord Lucas's plotted infidelity, the scheme that saw his long-awaited child at last conceived but born horribly deformed. The only difference is that Tyanna stands at his side, and not screaming in chains.

First, Tyanna takes Alys's tongue. Only then, beneath Maegor's watchful eye, must Tyanna torture the one she holds most dear.

When the dragon at last grows bored with the torture, and turns his wider wrath upon all House Harroway, Tyanna is free to at last grant Alys Harroway a quick death.

Queen Alys is beyond hurting when her body is dismembered, its seven portions impaled upon the walls of the Red Keep. Tyanna is beyond suspicion.

In cleaning up the mess that is House Harroway, Tyanna is far too shaken to hear of Queen Visenya's death until it is too late. Alyssa Velaryon and her youngest brats, dragons both, have by then long fled into the night, and beyond reach of her spiders. With only one suspect in his grasp, Maegor arrests Prince Viserys and turns him over to Tyanna. It becomes painfully obvious after the first day the princes knows nothing, but she must prolong suffering for another eight before his body at last gives out on him.

Not long after the Red Keep's completion and the execution of its workers by a jealous king, Queen Ceryse at least has the decency to die. For Alys's sake, Tyanna never wastes her experiments on the bitch, who dies childless and at last ensnared by her own pride.

The next years are quiet, in their own way. Maegor stops seeking her bed. Between burning the zealous smallfolk from their woods and circling the castles of rebel lords, he is not much of a man at all. Yet Tyanna does not know peace. The treasury hemorrhages funds and she must burn out treachery from all corners, as servants and lords alike take up the whispers of Beast King and King Abomination.

Some lords are too fearful or loyal to ever rebel. Some are far too ambitious to let a dragon pass them by. The foolish offer sisters and daughters. The intelligent propose Velaryons and Masseys, other crownlander houses with at least a proven drop of dragon blood.

Maegor compromises; two wives of the realm, two of the blood, all of proven fertility. Beautiful Jeyne Westerling is already widowed, and Elinor Costayne need only lose her husband. Larissa Velaryon has a daughter to prove her worth and a husband killed beside Aegon. The last bride is no other than Princess Rhaena herself, to weaken the claims of her siblings and double the chances of birth a dragon. Seven queens, for the seven gods who had mocked him.

Maegor weds his human brides in a single ceremony. He flies all three around King's Landing, claiming them atop the Dragonkeep's foundations one by one.

But Rhaena is a dragon. Despite the risks, Maegor insists on the ancient rites, for he trusts his twin hostages to keep their mother compliant. The bite marks on his throat are a sign of passion, and certainly not an earnest attempt on Rhaena's part to rip out his jugular.

For three moons Tyanna waits and prays. One barren wife is bad luck. Three is grave misfortune. Seven brides, four of proven fertility, are proof the fault lies not in the women.

Tyanna has long suspected this, of course. Maegor is a lustful man that has claimed as many whores as he has taken lives. Not once has one come forward with a child undeniably his.

Two years have granted Tyanna time and experimentation. She has perfected the basic brew, has made several unwitting servants into fathers at long last, and made adjustments to try accounting for the dragon blood. Jeyne Westerling is her first test subject. Three moons later, when Maegor is confident enough to announce her pregnancy to the kingdom, Tyanna slips the same into Elinor's hippocras, to double the chances of a child.

Larissa and Rhaena are beyond her reach, for they sneak contraceptives more obscure than simple moon-tea, and are guarded by Rhaena's senses. Tyanna knows better than to poison a dragon, or a love beneath the dragon's nose.

Once more, a bride goes into labor three moons early. The child torn from Jeyne Westerling has twisted stumps for legs and skeletal branches for arms, no true gender. Its mother bleeds out not long after, for her wounds were too great for the maesters to staunch. The people whisper Maegor cursed, that his line of monsters shall end with him.

Maegor's eye instead falls on Tyanna.

"I confess my crimes," she says, when Maegor has scarcely gathered his torturers. "I poisoned Jeyne Westerling, and my poor Alys. I owe her my honesty, now." Her lips when the king flushes, black creeping at his temples. "And Elinor, of course. Her child will be just as much an abomination as your other two."

Maegor's nostrils flare, as he confirms all three monsters his own. _"Why?"_ he snarls, forming the rage into a word.

Tyanna looks him in the eye, and smirks. "They are all I could grow from your seed. Didn't you see yourself in them, Maegor?"

Blackfyre slashes in a guttural roar. Queen Tyanna is still smiling when her head is lopped from her shoulders, for even in the end she denied the dragon the satisfaction of her torture.

* * *

Two moons after Tyanna's head rots from its spike, Elinor Costayne brings forth an eyeless child, its arms joined to its torso by winged membranes and colorless scales upon its back. The Mother spares her life.

The Bronze Prince and the Silver Princess return triumphantly from the east with an army at their side. The Beast King's followers desert in droves, especially when Rhaena flies off into the night with Blackfyre and Princess Aerea. Maegor, shackled to his chamber pot, is too ill to follow. In his place he instead orders a rider to Oldtown to behead Princess Rhaella, but of course pious Lord Hightower refuses, and imprisons the man instead.

With only four thousand men heeding his call, and an army of five great royal houses about to bear down upon them, Lord Hayford cautiously suggests his king abdicate and take the black.

There is no room to transform with his war council assembled, so instead Maegor rips Lord Hayford's head from its shoulders. For a dragon his age the feat is laughably easy. He impales it upon the Iron Throne, absently licking the blood from his fingers as he motions for his council to continue. When he declares the council over, he dismisses his men, and remains behind to brood.

His Kingsguard of course ensure his privacy by shutting the doors and watching them from the outside. They sweat through the snarls that shake the Red Keep's foundation and the long silence that follows. Their king does not command them to his side, and so they stand to honor their last order. Only when Queen Elinor, recovered from her sickbed, strolls in to check upon her king, who had never visited her bed last night, do they at last allow her entry.

The Great Hall is massive, the one chamber in the Red Keep where even a dragon Maegor's size might preside in unfurled majesty. Now the Beast King lays in slumped coils, the room hot as oven from the last of the body heat. His blood gushes in waterfalls. The Iron Throne drips red, red as the gash upon the dragon's onyx throat.

So dies Maegor, the Beast King, an unconquered dragon to the end. His legacy is a shattered realm and a body that becomes a stinking, logistical nightmare.

Perhaps he intended for the Red Keep to be his funeral pyre, but the Queen Regent instead orders his body hauled out into the grounds. There three dragons carefully bank their fires in a controlled burn until much of the problem is ashes. With much distaste they fly one trip of ashes into the skies, to nominally set his spirit free so it won't haunt the castle left behind. The rest of the ashes and charred dragonbone is hauled out of the keep by the cartload, bound for the Blackwater or the midden heaps.

Septons, septas, and silent sisters are summoned from all corners of the realm to purify the Great Hall. Their incense burns long and hard, to drown out the smell of dragon corpse and charred dragon-flesh.

By the time Jaehaerys first sits the Iron Throne, the stench is almost gone. But not for dragons.

In a throne still stinking of blood and rot, a stench that's seeped into the steel, Jaehaerys sits unshaken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Alys Harroway here was inspired a lot by Kingmaking's awesome rendition of her. I am totally for the theory Tyanna knew damn well Maegor was infertile. Because of the unhealthy amount of magics involved, her best efforts could only create monsters, and she knew it by the end.


	7. The Cannibal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Aerea Targaryen, who came to be the Cannibal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really where I take the canon events leading up to the Dance in broad strokes.

Aerea Targaryen knows she was born to be a queen, destined to be a dragon. She and Rhaella both know it like they know Rhaella fated for the Faith. It is simply who they were born to be. Their Uncle Jaehaerys and Aunt Alysanne, even the woman they call mother, don't know them well enough to tell them otherwise.

Aerea's destiny is not to be shipped off to Driftmark when her so-called mother becomes its future lady and demands her back. But Aerea's father isn't Corwyn Velaryon, with his stupid beard and stupid habit of bossing her around like she's _his_ daughter. Or Lord Daemon, who bosses her around and is scary enough to mean it. Her true father was Aegon Targaryen, a dragon and a king. Driftmark is for seahorses, all the sniveling cousins that think they're better than Aerea because they don't kick septas and tell them what to do. But dragons don't let old harpies tell them what to do.

Nor do dragons listen to aunts that aren't even proper aunts. Larissa Velaryon is only Corwyn's cousin, Daemon's older niece. Her daughter Maris is a _Tarth._ But because Larissa is closer than a sister to her mother, and Maris is her elder by year, both expect her to listen to them too.

For a while, Aerea is able to swallow her pride and do her best to behave. When she does, Rhaena takes her flying. On her back Aerea can spread out her arms and pretend _she's_ the dragon, old and strong enough to go wherever she likes. Mother only takes her to Dragonstone, which has little beyond rocks and a smoky mountain, and very rarely to Oldtown for a visit with Rhaella.

Aerea misses court and her all her friends. She misses her hounds and her horse, because Driftmark is a small, stupid island and there's proper room for them.

"Mother," she wheedles, because Rhaena only listens to her when she calls her that, "can't we go visit King's Landing?"

"No, Aerea," her mother says, attention only half on her. 'Aunt Larissa' always does Driftmark's expenses, but Rhaena likes to check them over herself after. Usually with Aunt Larissa by her side.

"But I'm going to be _queen_ one day. How can I be a proper queen if I don't know my people?"

Rhaena rolls her eyes. "Because I'm the Lady of Driftmark, little dragon, and have higher priorities than ferrying you around by your every whim."

"Can't you make me a dragon, then, so I can fly myself?"

The woman heaves a long-suffering sigh. "You know it doesn't work like that."

_Yes,_ Aerea huffs to herself, _and you never tell me how it works._

She's learned not to mutter things like that aloud, not if she wants a boxing to the ears or evening scouring the dishes. Rhaena has long learned sending her to muck out the stables is no punishment in her mind.

Just as Aerea has learned not to stick her fingers into candles or into the hearth to find her own fire. Mother had imprisoned her in her room for weeks after that. All Aerea has to show are faint red burn marks on her hands and bruised pride.

When Rhaena's nostrils flare white with the force her repressed temper, Aerea knows to stop pressing. Instead she returns to her room and the old naval map Aunt Larissa thought might make her more interested in the family trades. She dreams about where she'll fly first when she has her own wings. Maybe she'll circle the Giant of Braavos or land atop the red pyramids of Ghis.

Always, her eye moves to the Lands of the Long Summer. No ship dares the Smoking Sea, but dragons fear neither fire nor ghosts. What a sight Valyria must be, even if it's all rubble by now. She'd be the first dragon since the Doom to behold it.

Aerea waits a few weeks for Rhaena's temper to calm down, so she can try asking again. Velaryons like their trade, and Rhaena fancies herself one. If she asks to visit the Free Cities instead, to frame this visit as an opportunity to build up new ties or some such, maybe then Rhaena will listen.

Dragons never give up. That's how the Beast King claimed the kingdom from her father and how Uncle Jaehaerys won it back.

Her mother, who can fume for weeks, calms down with miraculous swiftness. For once, Aerea believes the gods on her side.

She asks again. Her hope bubbles at the strange, sad smile that crosses Rhaena's face, but the woman only shakes her head.

"No, Aerea. I'm afraid I won't be flying for a long time. Well over half a year, unfortunately." Aerea's brow furrows as Rhaena's smile only grows. "You'll be a big sister then, little dragon."

"I already am a big sister," Aerea states flatly, "to _Rhaella."_

Rhaena puts one hand to her belly, as Aerea's own tumbles ominously. "Both of you will be big sisters next year."

"No," Aerea grinds out, as the woman's face slackens in shock. "We won't be. Our father was a dragon. Your husband is a _seahorse."_

Rhaena's hand slaps her. Her cheek burns so hot Aerea hopes she spits fire into the woman's face.

The glob running down her cheek is almost as satisfying.

* * *

Corlys Velaryon and Daenerys Targaryen are born only weeks apart from each other. In a way they each steal something from Aerea, the oldest dragon of her generation, the one true queen. Daenerys usurps her place as Uncle Jaehaerys' heir, when he should have been _Aerea's._ Small, whiny Corlys grants Rhaena and the Velaryons an excuse to stop trying to win her over.

Aerea appreciates Corlys. Rhaena and Aunt Larissa have something helpless to fawn over. Maris spends days knitting new clothes and blankets, while Corwyn stops bothering Aerea altogether. Even Daenerys ensures the knights and ladies stop hounding her every footstep. They grant her so much time to focus on mysteries only know Aerea can grasp.

When the night is right, and she feels it in her bones, Aerea binds up her silver hair and sneaks out as if she is once more a lowly serving girl. It was a disguise perfected in her childhood, one preciously saved. Now it wins her freedom.

The moon is scarcely a sliver in the sky, but she has never seen more clearly. She leaves the castle far behind, for a desolate cliff overlooking the eastern sea.

Nothing comes with sacrifice. Aerea has learned that well. Her father gave his life to try winning his kingdom, as the Beast King did to end his reign on his own terms. Rhaena gave up her elder daughters for a sniveling seahorse and a second chance as the Lady of Driftmark.

In turn Aerea is prepared to sacrifice everything; her sister, her chance at her throne, perhaps even her life itself. How can dragons fly if such heavy ties weigh them down?

Kicking off her itchy gown in disgust, Aerea takes the cliff at a running leap. No matter what happens next, her slow death on Driftmark is over.

For a moment that lasts a lifetime, she falls, the wind whipping at her hair and through her outstretched fingers.

Then the fire takes her.

Cold salt waves lap at her belly, but several instinctive, mighty thrusts of her wings propel her up into safety. Away falls the world, as the skies unfurl.

Aerea roars her triumph. Her mother was pale blue and her sire silvery-white, but she is hewn in the Conqueror's image. Her black scales blend into the night.

When Driftmark realizes what has happened, a desperate Rhaena barrels into the skies. She flies west for the capital, and the impetuous daughter she believes about to lay claim to her rightful throne.

Her daughter, driven by a dream old as dragons, soars east.

Valyria awaits.

* * *

With King's Landing deserted of dragon sightings not their king and queen, Rhaena immediately takes wing for Oldtown. She finds only Rhaella, distraught at the rumors and begging for answers. Her mother soothes her fears, sleeps a night, and vows to only return with her sister in tow. 

Rhaena flies from the barrowlands and the Fever River to the canyons of the Torrentine to the Mountains of the Moon. There is no sight or scent of her daughter, only wild rumors that keep her on the wing for weeks at a time.

Rhaena rests only because maesters and ladies beg it of her. She cannot bring Aerea home if she drops dead herself.

After a year of fruitless searching, she limps back to Driftmark and the family she neglected far too long. Corwyn is relieved to see her alive, though far too tactful to say so aloud. Her good-father, Daemon, welcomes her back with only the stoic disappointment she knows him for. Larissa berates her for her foolishness even as she dutifully lists new rumors of Aerea, in descending order of likeliness. And warms a bed long gone empty. Maris is a maid of four-and-ten now, getting her first serious betrothal offers. Already Larissa has stonily turned down a proposal from elderly Lord Estermont. No matter what her scheming good-family on Tarth has planned, they certainly can't force the offer through when both Larissa and Maris remain under Driftmark's protection.

Corlys is no longer a toddling babe. He is a very astute little boy of two, with pale sea-foam hair like Alyssa's, and eyes of Velaryon blue-green. He looks to Larissa as his mother and Maris as his big sister.

With nowhere left to turn, Rhaena grudgingly concedes to letting Rego Draz, her brother's master of coin, turn up more solid evidence in Essos. While she awaits news she does her best to reconcile with her good-family, and do right by at least her youngest child.

There are rumors that Aerea is dead, crashed into the narrow sea or into a mountain. There are those that say she simply threw herself to her death upon that cliff, that the roar of a juvenile dragon was wishful thinking on Driftmark's part. Rhaena has repeaters of those rumors banished from her presence, if not the isle itself.

Then, near two years after Aerea's disappearance, a hysterical ship docks in Driftmark. A ragged black dragon, far too small to be of Rhaena's generation, is on a direct course for the Dragonmont. Heedless of her gown, Rhaena reaches open ground, and flies. She passes over three squawking ravens in route from Dragonstone.

Rhaena fixates on the sound of screams.

On the sheer back of the Dragonmont lay the burning corpses of several Dragonguards, distinguishable only by their armor. The survivors, some hoisting burned brothers between them, are stumbling back in a wild retreat. Pale silver flames, streaked blue, lash out the stragglers. Spotting a potential challenger, the smaller dragon retreats even deeper for the cave mouth, spreading its wings and snarling in a threat display.

Rhaena's first impulse is Maegor managed to spawn a dragon after all. The brat is coal black, with even more scars than the Beast King. Its wings are like ragged sails, jagged red scars webbing across its neck and snout.

Her build is slender, like Egg's, like Rhaena's own. Her one eye burns furiously pale, like Egg's. The other is a red, weeping socket.

_"Aerea!"_ she keens, only a mournful wail in this form. _"Oh, little dragon, what happened to you?"_

Aerea's snarls back. She refuses to loosen her stance until Rhaena wheels away. Only then does her head slither forward. Snatching the closest charred body, she retreats into her lair.

Rhaena's stomach twists at the sound of armor gnashed open by dragonfang. Without ever letting the cave from her sight, she lands close to where the Dragonguard have gathered at the slope to tend to their wounded. Most have torn off their armor, using torn tunics to staunch bleeding and bind wounds. So Rhaena transforms and stands heedless of her nudity when she demands an explanation.

"My lady," one says faintly, eyes a thousand miles away. "We approached cautiously. The child was obviously wounded, but too feral to trust us. Mylos finally worked up the courage to approach, and..."

"Visenya," another mumbles in disbelief. "Even the Bronze Queen never..."

"Never what?" Rhaena hisses.

"She was aggressive, in the end," a third Dragonguard supplies diplomatically. "She burned those of us who strayed too close to her lair or feeding grounds. We were simply in her way, never... actively targeted."

"She is my daughter," Rhaena says coldly. "Your missing princess, returned to you."

"Of course, my lady," he responds swiftly. "She has undoubtedly suffered a great trauma. She will return to herself, in time."

"I will be here when she does," she vows.

There will be those who will doubt the black dragon of Dragonstone was ever more than a beast at all. Perhaps it is a shade returned from Old Valyria, to torment those who had dared escape the Doom.

Openly, the dragon is only Princess Aerea or, less formally, the Black Princess. She might have been their queen one day.

Behind closed doors, she is called the Cannibal. All dragons are born men, and to feast upon men is to break the primal law that separates humanity from the beasts. Yet the lore has past stories of man-eaters, the sort of rogues the knights of old slew. It is a special sort of sickness, for a dragon to feast on fellow dragons.

Not that there are any who dare openly call Princess Aerea such. Those who do so within earshot of Lady Rhaena's formidable hearing lose their tongues entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the time the Dance unfurls Aerea is a bit shy of ninety years old. Perfectly doable by human standards, as Walder Frey has shown. And probably still a better fate than what befell her in canon.
> 
> Expect Rhaena next, because her life goes far before and beyond these moments. As you can see here the non-existence of dragon eggs has somewhat changed her relationship with Elissa Farman, while Maegor's extra demand for dragon-blooded demand has once more brought Larissa and the Velaryons back into her life.
> 
> Before the last book came out I was one of many people who head-canoned Rhaena as the mother of Corlys Velaryon, which adds an extra level of punch to his dynastic claims and the debate of Rhaenys' rights versus Viserys'. Given how Rhaena just petered out in canon, she has a moderately more happy ending here.


	8. The Sky Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Rhaena Targaryen, the Sky Queen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the author's broad strokes grow even broader.

"Don't you move, Rhae, I mean it. That curve of your neck is so swan-like I just have to..."

Rhaena Targaryen is a dragon, a future queen. Beyond her parents and her tutors she need not obey anyone, not even Egg. Yet for dear Larissa she stands still as a statue, no matter the crick in her neck or the ache in her wings for holding her weight up so high. Larissa proves a lovely distraction from the pain. Face skewed up in concentration, she waxes poetic over Rhaena's form even as she commits her form to immortality.

After an eternity Larissa finally proclaims her masterpiece done. Rhaena melodramatically slumps with a groan, easing off her wings and onto her belly. Her friend, her first and dearest, only laughs and turns her easel around.

"Well, Rhae? Have I done my dragon justice?"

Rhaena does not have the same conception of her dragon face as her girl's. Mirrors are only made so large. For years she has known only the dark reflection when flying over water and the hurried sketches of courtiers. She knows she is an awkward age, still growing from an ungainly child into the slender grace of her father. Captured in blues and grays is an impossible creature with a swan neck and regal grace, sky-blue scales streaked white and wings unfurled for flight.

So great is Rhae's embarrassment she steps back to transform, so her flames won't singe the canvas. The crisp air does not bother her. She wears only a shift of her own shed scales, but that is only for modesty. Even in this shape her fires burn too hot for a slight chill to be anything more than refreshing.

"Extreme flattery, perhaps," she demurs, wrapping her arms around Larissa's shoulders as she inspects that impossible portrait up close. "Have you taken lessons from my dear aunt's patrons?"

Just last year Aunt Visenya consented to sit still long enough for a portrait. Even now she is still painted as the austere beauty from the Conquest, grown only more distinguished and paler in her hair. Of course the craggy lines of her face aren't captured, any more than her scars from Grandfather or the bronze scales swallowing wrinkled skin.

Larissa does not titter. She laughs, for out here on Dragonstone's cliffs there is no one to care about etiquette. "I only paint my sky princess as I see her. Who am I to lessen the grace the gods granted her, in all her forms?"

"So claims the girl seeking a royal ride."

Larissa's eyes twinkle blue as the summer sea. "Can't it be both?"

Rhaena has been banned from flying family since she and Egg near got themselves killed two years ago. But Larissa is only a distant cousin, her house far too big to care if one extraneous daughter plays some harmless games with her future queen. They have only encouraged their friendship for all the favor it might reap in the years to come.

Rhaena remembers near buckling with Egg's weight, shivering in dread at the thought of dropping him or failing in her flight. She is perfectly at ease whenever Larissa mounts her. Her friend trusts her completely, just as Rhaena does her. If Rhaena was born a dragon, Larissa was born to ride one. She knows where to sit for the comfort of rider and dragon, how to shift her weight so she flies _with_ Rhaena without upsetting her balance. It's a pity her parents are not so proactive in finding a bride for Viserys, for the perfect candidate is beneath their very nose.

However, it is downright infuriating when Larissa is so suddenly yanked from her side to marry a _second son._ Her grace and wit are unmatched among Uncle Daemon's own gaggle of girls. She is a princess' companion and of the blood herself, however distant. Surely there were far worthier choices for her hand than Tarth's younger whelp!

Rhaena finds new favorites to fill the hole in her heart. Sam Stokeworth is big and boisterous, brave enough to try dragging even Uncle Maegor into spirited conversation. Alayne Royce has a tongue sharp as steel and a heart deep as the sea. Mel Piper can't sew to save her life and is shameless in voicing her opinions from horses to the latest court affair to any and everyone listening, but would kill for those she holds dear.

When Rhaena is sixteen, a dragon grown, she declares herself free to fly wherever she wishes. Father honors her independence for she does not abuse it. Swimming naked in Pinkmaiden's blue moat and visiting Larissa and her little Maris on Tarth are rare escapes when the weight of court and the unending parade of desperate suitors grows too much.

She and her ladies at least make a game of making her suitors look like idiots before the court and the king, because all of them very much are. Rhaena is a _dragon._ Do any think Father will waste her on some pungent rose or arrogant lion when she has brothers? She and Egg have long known their fate, for Viserys has never shown himself a dragon either. Their eventual marriage is obvious to all except the idiots too blinded by their Faith to realize dragons answer to no one but themselves.

* * *

Rhaena has every intention of starting her family on Dragonstone, where there are none to shame her dragon shape or her brother-husband. It seems the last safe haven left to her family, when King's Landing itself seethes with such unrest. She does not realize the consequences of trying to avoid further confrontation with the smallfolk by avoiding transformation until she near swoons and falls from her horse upon their arrival in Crakehall, and then proceeds to retch up everything offered to her.

Rhaena does not intend to let Egg know the reason why. He finds out before she can quietly do away with it.

They do not need a child right now. They need a _dragon,_ one with wings to soar above a siege or even fire to rain down upon it.

Egg's hands encircle her belly as if she holds the very world within it. His lilac eyes shine with utter adoration when he kisses her belly. "This is the one great thing I have accomplished in my life, Rhae, aside from wedding you. I'm not letting those, those... _savages_ steal the most innocent life behind these walls."

Rhaena crumbles at the look in her brother's eyes. She can't resist killing the light there anymore than she could say to that ill-fated flight all those years ago, no matter how it was best for both of them. No matter how understandable a miscarriage might be in such a stressful time, there is no such convenience to stop Rhaena from pacing the walls of their gilded cage.

Then the raven of Father's death reaches them and it is too late for anything but Egg's choking temper. When Rhaena realizes the fire building all around him, she pushes him from the wall before his fire can consume her and the babe he insisted on, much less Crakehall's lord and defenses. Thankfully his addled instincts glide him down to the yard. Rhaena might have become a kinslayer otherwise.

Egg is darkly satisfied to be a dragon at long lost, no matter how high the price was. Rhaena has no choice but to choke down her bitterness all his fire cost was their father's life, her ability to protect herself, and the very stability of the realm their grandfather built. He is all the dragon she and the bump in her belly have, so by gods will she make him dragon enough to protect them all until she can.

Rhaena aches for Father more than ever, when she must teach Egg how to fly and fight while stranded on the ground.

In the bowls of Casterly Rock Rhaena finally brings forth Rhaella and Aerea. After many hours of swearing and cursing, near setting the chamber alight, Rhaena takes solace from how Egg stands over their cradles, captivated as if he beholds a true miracle. It eases the bone-deep ache in her body and her irritation over their daughters' every squall, however slight.

Rhaena does not nurse her daughters. She binds her breasts and takes to the air to remind Lannisport they call two dragons their rightful rulers.

But right makes nothing without might, as their uncle and grandfather have both proved in stealing and forging a throne. So Rhaena stands stoic as Egg flies off to his death. She can stop him no more than she could stop herself from near killing them both and not killing their twins. Even if she does not love him enough to die beside him and her brave, brave Mel.

For the sake of her daughters, she returns to the lion's den only to retrieve them. Marq Farman grants them refuge on Fair Isle, but dragons are no hostages. She sends both daughters away with allies so that she might keep them safe even if Maegor tortures her piece by piece.

Dragons are not so easily hidden. Rhaena's eyes burn a blue no human shares. Her stomach is deep and hungry as Shipbreaker Bay. Maegor's spies need look only for where livestock are sorely depleted from her appetites to find her. She will not starve herself and waste away as her father has.

When Maegor bids her home like a naughty child Rhaena meekly accepts. On her own she stands no chance of rallying an army. On her own it takes only one bite in the throes of passion to lay even a dragon Maegor's size low, if she opens his jugular.

Rhaena is not Maegor's only prize. His pet sorcerer smiles coyly when she unveils the guests of honor. The two girls are mirror images, with fair silver-hair. They are not dragonseeds plucked from Dragonstone or imported from Lys. Their eyes, wide and terrified, are the same violet Egg's had been all his life, until his fire had leeched their color away.

Before Maegor takes his dragon bride, he weds three widows of proven fertility. Larissa Velaryon, with her resemblance to Rhaena's mother and Maris of Tarth as her daughter, has distant dragon blood herself. Tyanna is especially pleased when she and Rhaena notice each other.

"Until I have sons of my own, dear Aerea shall by heir," Maegor announces in a solemn rumble. His obsidian gaze locks onto Rhaena, who has clasped Larissa's hand with her own daughters before her, just out of reach. "Perhaps, niece, you and our cousin might grant me children first. I'd wed them to the other, should they prove dragons of the proper gender."

Larissa bows her head as Rhaena's nails dig into her skin deep enough to bleed. "If the gods would grant us so, your grace."

The gods are with them, for they never do.

After Maegor rapes each of his three brides atop the Dragonkeep's foundations, he and Rhaena fly a proper nuptial flight. She blames her bite on passion. That much is the truth.

Rhaena puffs up at pride whenever she glimpses the fang marks his high collars cannot hide. She and Larissa conceal their shame beneath long-sleeved gowns and exotic powders. Maegor can never hide his shame and flushes whenever a courtier guilty averts their eyes from his bulging neck.

Sky Queen, the people call her. She is one twice over who soars high and proud for all Maegor tries to keep her grounded, scales lustrous blue-white behind the scars he gives her. For the sake of her loved ones she must always land than flee for the east like her family, but such is more than all her fellow brides hold.

* * *

 _The Tempest_ is the swiftest ship in House Velaryon's fleet. For one long used to the air, it is as slow and cumbersome as a wheelhouse.

The realm grumbles it has far too many former queens, for so many Black Brides have not had had the grace to die. But Driftmark receives this one enthusiastically. She is a native child, and her arrival long-awaited.

Despite his hair being thin white wisps and his face craggy as the cliffs above the harbor, Lord Daemon beams young as the boys beside him as his guest disembarks. "Little sister, I am surprised to see you still have your sea legs after all those years on dragon-back."

Alyssa Velaryon, Queen Mother, is sixty-seven. Her hair is white as the foam, her weathered skin translucent. She disembarks with queenly grace. She holds her chin firmer than she did in all her years as queen, for as Regent of Storm's End on her youngest son's behalf she learned to carry herself like Argella Durrandon so that her subjects might heed her.

"A seahorse never forgets the sea, Daemon." She smiles faintly at the boys beside him, who scramble for proper introductions. "Aeron, Matthar, might you humor an old woman with an earnest hug?"

Aeron will be fourteen soon and Matthar has just turned twelve. Any boy their age should honor their grandmother with a strained smile and the briefest of embraces. Yet even Aeron, who has never been one for touching, wraps his arms fully around her and almost lingers too long to be proper in a public setting. Alyssa squeezes them both hard as she can. They already lost their father five years before, and their big brother is not here as once more their lives sail in stormy waters.

Quick as the sea, any levity fades from Daemon's face. "Any news of Corlys?"

"Aemon flies long and hard after him," is all Alyssa can answer. Fast as a dragon flies, Corlys has sailed for Lorath. It is perhaps the Stranger they race against. "How is..."

"Larissa and Maris are always at her side." Daemon's eyes darken. "They are all the company she cares for."

"She has always been proud," Alyssa murmurs. "Too proud for her own children to see her until the wounds heal a bit."

Some tension eases from Matthar's shoulders at the promise his mother may yet recover. Aeron's face twists in a sneer he tries so hard to bite back. They both know full well why Rhaena is as she is.

Driftmark is not volcanic like Dragonstone. Its only caves are cold, damp holes in the cliffs. One still smokes; not from dragonfire, but a fortune spent in wood to burn the dankness away. The path down is smooth and sea-slicked, with only a haphazard rail for any sort of safety. Alyssa's escort hangs nervously at her side, but the queen mother walks evenly. She has climbed these cliffs since girlhood and the Dragonmont long after.

Her critical eye notes the path is much too narrow for large loads. Some iron bolts from a makeshift pulley system still hang in the rocks above, though near yanked free by a dragon's furious claw.

At the entrance Alyssa pauses long enough to smear a scented oil beneath her nose. She remembers how the Red Keep stank when Maegor's corpse was dragged from it. This is even worse, putrefaction sharpened by sickness. Even worse is the gods damned heat, sweltering near enough for a dragon to faint.

"Oh, little dragon," she murmurs.

Her eldest moans, low and deep in her throat. Eyes glassy with fever she tries to raise her head. Larissa, sweat-soaked, murmurs into her ear until she stills.

Alyssa does not weep as she behold the deep, ragged chunks of flesh gouged from her daughter's sides, the festering fang marks in her neck. She has long learned to swallow her tears, and the smell would only upset her Rhaena.

"Oh, little dragon, what happened to you?"

Aerea happened, Alyssa damn well knows. Rhaena has always chanced her territory, hoping to stir her daughter's memory. This time she had proved too bold, too trusting. But her daughter seems comforted by her voice, the first she's known since the womb, and so Alyssa rambles on for her sake.

"I'm here, little dragon. I'm here, forever and always."

Alyssa has never heard of a dragon succumbing infection. The fire in their blood simply burns too hot for most sicknesses to take root. But Aerea was twisted by whatever Doom befell Valyria. Whatever sickness festers in her veins is nowhere near so mundane.

"Was it guilt, for abandoning her to begin with, no matter for her safety?" she founds herself murmuring. "Did you resent her for that beast holding her over your head? Or because you  were tortured for trying to find happiness with Corwyn here on Driftmark after?" Larissa pauses in stroking Rhaena's snout. Alyssa pretends not to notice. "Why couldn't you give up on her five years ago, ten years, twenty?"

"Because she is your daughter." Alyssa closes her eyes long and hard to stamp down the tears. "How can we ever give up on our daughters?"

By the time Corlys returns he is too late for anything except the final goodbye. Her far-flung family descend on Driftmark for the funeral though most are not there for her sake. Jaehaerys and Alysanne's brood are there for their parents and royal obligation. Boremund and Jocelyn, who have scarce seen their half-sister, come to stand beside their mother so that she might tall and trembling as her firstborn is given to the pyre.

Some might call Alyssa blessed. Rhaena is the first child she buries in over thirty years, since she awoke to find Aenys keening over Vaella's still body. They forget she is also the mother of Viserys and Aegon the Uncrowned, that her sons were torn apart than granted the dignity of the pyre.

Once more Alyssa tries for a dirge, one last lullaby to soothe her child's spirit into the next world. Her voice cracks. It is Rhaella who takes over, with a voice near sweet and strong as her mother's, with a hymn of her own. She must sing especially loud, for the fire roars loud as thunder.

When the last of the flames die down it is Corlys who ventures into the ash to pass urns to the dragons. Jaehaerys and Alysanne are first to fly, circling far and wide over Driftmark by the time their eldest boys and Alyssa's own namesake ascend.

Rather than watch the trails of ash scatter to the winds, Alyssa finds her own gaze straying north.

No shadow darkens the horizon. The Black Princess grants her family space to mourn, if only because Jaehaerys and Alysanne loom larger than her, too large for her to swoop down upon their children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to dragon eggs not existing the Farmans do not try to cling to Rhaena as they did in canon, while House Velaryon's own distant Targaryen blood bring her together with Larissa and her mother's family. 
> 
> Before Fire and Blood's release I was among who speculated Rhaena remarried to a Velaryon to become Corlys' mother as the ages line up and pack extra punch to his own dynastic claims. I kept that here as Corlys and his brothers become attempts to move on after fucking up so badly with her twins.
> 
> Yes, Alyssa Velaryon survives birthing Jocelyn and Rogar fucking Baratheon. Prior to Fire and Blood's release a read a lot of great pre-Dance era fics exploring Targaryen women, including a great one where Alyssa Targaryen is the driving force in getting her line as heirs over Aemon's. Screw GRRM for killing so many Targaryen wives in childbirth rather than developing their characters and exploring how they could have impacted the plot beyond popping out kids.


	9. The Good Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Alysane Targaryen, the Good Queen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Broad strokes for Alysanne and her kids, though her life does still get shitty at the end.

Alysanne Targaryen is five years old when she knows her life complete. She has her parents and Jae, Serys and Rhae and Egg. Her papa takes her for rides when she's a good girl, which is always, and mama teaches her to hold the harp and spin on the dance floor just so. What more could a princess want?

Alysanne is warm and snug beside Jae when she is startled from her dreams. The door to their room bangs open. Even in the dark she knows neither man is good Ser Raymont, who looms like a friendly giant rather than slinking forward low and menacing.

"Aly," Jae hisses. "Get behind me and-"

"No," she growls back. "You're a _boy,_ they want you more!"

In their fight to protect the other, the shadows get closer and closer. Only then does Alysanne realize what she's missing.

She finds it in a brightness like starlight, in the stink of charred flesh and the screams of dying men. She and Jae huddle together, their wings and weird long necks allowing them to get closer than ever, and regret nothing. Jae is safe. Like this she can keep him that way.

From men, at least. Not from Aunt Visenya, who eats their papa from the inside out and would swallow them up if they ever thought to fly away too. It doesn't matter how small and swift Alysanne is. Aunt Visenya can gobble up in three bites, like Uncle Maegor did to Egg. They are the strongest dragons alive, big and strong. Next to them Jae and Alysanne are horse-sized lizards.

Their mother is no true dragon at all. Aunt Visenya's eyes slide over her like she does not exist at all.

Alysanne only has her fangs and her fire. Alyssa has secrets and cunning patience. When the Bronze Queen is found cold and dead in her den one morning, Dragonstone erupts into chaos.

Jae is only ten; too small to fly to Driftmark, let alone carry Mother to freedom. But if Targaryens have wings, Velaryons have ships swift as the wind. The dragonseeds not obsessed over readying Aunt Visenya's funeral search the skies for runaway dragons. They never think to check the ship that sails east that very morning, three cloaked figures stolen away in the cargo hold.

They take Dark Sister too. Aunt Visenya hasn't held it since she had hands. Uncle Maegor pried Blackfyre from Egg's body. It's only fair they take something from him too.

* * *

With the septs burned and the Red Keep still reeking of Uncle Maegor, Mother weds Rogar Baratheon in the foundations of the Dragonkeep Maegor raised. Inwardly Alysanne seethes even more than Jaehaerys. Her brother believes Mother to be marrying beneath her, for she is a Queen Regent and mother of dragons lowering herself for a mere lord of bastard blood. He burns that his own Hand did not think to ask royal permission for the match, at any implication Rogar might try acting a second father.

Rogar is even worse at hiding his true face for Alysanne, for he oft forgets she is as much a dragon as Jae and Rhaena, as their father before them. Almost always he reeks of sex and wine to a dragon's nose. For Mother daring to have the gall to come to him a widow, Rogar fucks seven maidens from Lys and saunters to his own wedding still reeking of their perfumes.

But Alysanne is no Visenya, and Jaehaerys no Maegor. They do not behead Rogar or burn him alive when it is well within the ancient rights for them to do so. Alysanne receives the ladies as a gracious host. Jaehaerys is calm and composed, warm and wise beyond his years. If they must suffer Rogar's presence in the family then let them at least begin undermining his authority. Already the realm may look to the king nearing the end of his regency, to the princess that shall one day be their queen.

When he is entrenched as their stepfather Rogar immediately starts trying to find him 'proper' matches. No matter how close Orys was to Aegon, Rogar has nothing of Valyria in him. He believes Jaehaerys might sire dragons on the Archon of Tyrosh's buxom daughter, who has less of the blood in her than Tyanna of the Tower.

He and Alyssa's first few weeks are shattered by their first argument over the foolishness of his proposals. Dragon marries dragon, no matter how the realm rumbles. To bow to mob rule is to bow to the same forces that helped tear down their father and then their elder brother.

It is Uncle Daemon who informs Alysanne Rogar is saving her for his own brother, to spawn dragons named Baratheon. He was their informant in Maegor's time and now closer than ever, since Rhaena deigned take Cousin Corwyn as groom. With their elder brothers dead there was no worthier choice for a second spouse than him, however distant his own dragon blood.

That very night Alysanne and her brother fly for Dragonstone. They light up the night with their fires and wake the smallfolk with their roars. Under cover of dark their minds reach the inevitable conclusion. The dawn ceremony in the Conqueror's Sept, with all their Kingsguard as witness, is simply formality in the eyes of Dragonstone. They are declared wed in the own way, their union consummated before the eyes of gods and men.

Alysanne is disappointed to discover the raven did not kill Rogar in a stroke of rage, for he soon arrives on Dragonstone, roaring to annul a marriage the whole island believes sealed.

There is no proof otherwise. Alysanne has ridden her whole life astride horses and dragons alike. She and Jaehaerys receive Rogar in the Painted Table. Her brother sits tall in the Conqueror's first throne. She looms behind him with silver scales and smoking jaws. Rogar, a giant of a man, must still look up to a dragon of twelve.

Jaehaerys smiles patiently at his spluttered outrage. "Lord Rogar, surely an examination is simply extraneous at this point. We have a whole island as witness to our coupling. Of course, we wed as dragons. I have no doubt the septas know every secret of the woman's form, but the Faith does not dwell much on our other forms."

Alysanne smiles a dragon smile. Rogar pales. Beneath even her lustrous scales her bones are black, right down to the teeth.

The remainder of their regency is spent peacefully on Dragonstone. Across the bay Rogar makes ineffectual rumbles. His attempts to suppress their marriage cannot so many ships from spreading it far and wide. His attempts to prop up one of Rhaena's daughters are jeered down at, most especially by Rhaena herself. She favors Valyrian succession, where grown dragons come before unproven children.

When Rogar declares Rhaella the true princess Aerea, swapped in a dastardly plot to hide the true heir, he loses the last of his credibility in court and nearly annihilates his own house in trying to kidnap the poor girl.

Jaehaerys is a merciful man, a dutiful son. He accepts Rogar placing the blame solely upon himself and not his younger brothers. Nor do they demand Rogar to take the black, for their mother has asked it of them.

It is Alysanne who delivers their terms in a calm and level voice, that Rogar must never speak another word against them, that he must be both their loyal champion and a dutiful husband to their mother. The Bronze King looms behind her. In two bites he devours a bristly black boar near Rogar's size. Their stepfather takes the warning.

Rogar Baratheon is a loyal vassal the rest of his life. Their half-brother is still a boy of ten when his father passes, but Alyssa is a steady regent. She has reared four dragons, a king and two queens. Raising a decent Lord of Storm's End pales in comparison.

* * *

Daenerys is born in the seventh moon of the year, an auspicious omen if there ever was one. At her birth the realm is settled, not wracked by the same unrest and religious uncertainty of a decade before. Where Aerea and Rhaella were denounced as the spawn of incest, the capital rings bells and streets erupt in cheers at the birth of a healthy heir.

Though some murmur their firstborn should have been a son, Alysanne cradles a hale and hearty babe with deafening squalls, and knows she cradles a dragon. By the time Daenerys is a year and a half, she is able to run, splattering through mud and grass without thought of scolding from her nursemaids. So is she firm in demanding Alysanne for a little sister and crying up a storm when she gets Aemon instead. Yet when her initial rage fades love in Daenerys kindles hot and fierce, as she bonds to her baby brother as Rhaena once had to Egg.

Andal law is iron; father to son, or else father to daughter. Valyrian succession is fickle as flame. Inheritance favors grown dragons, a dragon lady before a human lord, blooded adults before unproven children. Daenerys is their firstborn and Aemon the first son. Alysanne favors the daughter she knows a dragon and her brother the son he believes in much the same. For now Alysanne is content to let the matter rest, until one of their children proves a dragon in truth.

Daenerys has no favorite toy, for her favorite plaything is the leather cloak she stretches taut between her arms and flaps like wings. It is dyed silver as Alysanne's scales, its edges actually trimmed with them. When she flies with either of her parents she'll fling out her cloak, whooping like she can catch the wind and soar off on her own. In the nursery she takes turns 'flying' off beds with her brothers on the back. They laugh and shriek that she'll truly take off with them. One day she shall.

"I'll be your color one day, mama," Daenerys declares one day.

"Is that so, little dragon?" she purrs.

Her daughter nods vehemently, deep violet eyes blazing. "Of course, Mama. I'll be the second prettiest dragon after you but I'll be the fastest and strong as Papa. I'll fly Aemon Baelon first, because he's the baby, and then Aemon so he'll stop whining and..."

Alysanne listens bliss and forces the fear from her mind, that her daughter the same age she was when assassins forced their way into their chambers. Daenerys shall never be forced to find her flame as her parents had. She will wake her dragon only when the time is right, as Aenys and Rhaena before her had.

Alysanne swallows her bitterness that Rhaena scarce knows her niece and nephews, for Daenerys reminds her so much of her sister at her strongest. Rhaena prefers the solitude of Driftmark, secluded with her sons. She flies to Oldtown once a year to visit Rhaella and Dragonstone many more times in an attempt to break through Aerea's sickness. Alysanne and her own family avoid the isle now, ever since her... niece has taken up residence. Her children learn to fly around the Red Keep and the Dragonkeep, while such danger lairs in the Dragonmont.

The greatest danger to their family proves not to be the Cannibal, but the Shivers, that infiltrate their shores during the worst winter in living memory. It hits the outer islands first, laying low lords and smallfolk alike, and spreads all the further on the mainland.

Jaehaerys locks down the Red Keep in quarantine. They are safest where they are, behind thick walls and strong swords. There is nowhere even a dragon might flee when the Shivers spread from sea to sea, from the Red Mountains to the Neck.

So also does he trust in their blood. Even in human form dragons burn at what would be feverish temperatures in mere mortals. They simply run too hot for mundane sickness to take root. The sorcerers of Old Valyria had heavily invested in their poisons for good reason, for only the strongest could break even a dragonlord's constitution.

Alysanne weathers captivity as gracefully as possible. She prays in the sept to Father, Mother, and Crone. With grace and good humor she defuses the tensions that simmer in her staff. She metes out the stores as judiciously as possible. A dragon her age should be devouring flocks that have not survived the winter freeze. She and Jaehaerys dip in the rations in a delicate balance between not worrying their maesters sick and showing themselves not above their enforced austerity.

But the Seven have never smiled down on their family. Alysanne's eyes snap open one night to chattering teeth and bare feet pattering on cold stone.

"M-M-Mama," Daenerys stutters out. She reaches out with a hand hot as dragonfire. "I-I'm _cold."_

Alysanne never leaves her daughter's side, even when her sons and brother are forced into quarantine. She snarls at the servants that try to draw them away. However small her human frame, even the burliest man flinches at a dragon's growl and flashing silver eyes. But it is not the dragon Daenerys needs. It is the mother that can stroke her hair and murmur soothing stories as maesters force teas and soups and scalding baths upon her.

The dull red flames in the hearth are not enough. So does Jaehaerys transform to grant his daughter dragonfire. His bronze flames burn hot and bright, devouring wood and leaving every septa and maester in the room a sweaty, frantic mess. Alysanne never beads with sweat. Daenerys never stops trembling.

Alysanne's eyes trail solemnly to the fire. Daenerys whimpers as the maester forces another scalding soup down her throat.

"Hush, little dragon," she soothes. "I'm here. I've heat enough for the both of us."

But it is not Alysanne's flame Daenerys needs. It is her own.

When Jaehaerys can take pacing the yard no more, he ascends with a defiant roar that has his attendants jumping back with startled yells. Alysanne prays to the Seven and the old gods of Valyria speed is on his side, that he shall get Rhaena, who alone knows how to willingly wake a dragon's fire.

By the time they return, their little girl's shivers have finally stopped. Though she is cold as stone she shall never feel it again.

With flames of silver and bronze and blue-cored white they give Daenerys to the flames, her first and final. She is wrapped in her own wings, leather cloak and mother's scales. For fear of infection, her brothers cannot even watch, but must remain secluded in the nursery.

Rhaena, without transforming once, grants no consolation. How can she know their agony, when all of her four children are at least alive, if not well? She flies for Driftmark before the flames even die down.

Daenerys is no dragon. Her ashes should not be scattered to the wind, but interred beside Vaella, the infant aunt none of them truly knew.

When nothing remains of their firstborn but cinders, Alysanne transforms. She rips the urn from a servant's hands and fills it to the brim.

Alysanne looks up to her brother. Their eyes burn with grief and rage, but never tears. Dragons have no tears to shed. "Jae," she breathes, too low for human hearing. "She wanted to fly."

Fly their little dragon does, forever and always. They do not stop until the last of her ashes are painstakingly swept up from the yard on their hands and knees, released to the wind.

* * *

Alysanne lives to see three of her children fly. None ever inherit her silver scales. Aemon is rich crimson with golden crest and horns, Baelon golden bronze, and Alyssa wine-dark.

She loves her eldest three no more and no less than the others. Maegelle has Rhaella's bright, patience nature and excels as a healer as she never did a princess. For all magic runs in his veins Vaegon never seeks it out in himself, only in the musty books of the Citadel.

Daella is no little dragon, but her mother's little flower, sweet and sensitive. For her quiet nature she is infantilized as too slow to read, too tongue-tied to sing her prayers. Daella is content to court believe whatever it damn well likes, for her faith and family are personal, and joys not for the sharp-tongued strangers that think her lesser for not seeking wings or the Faith like her elder sister. Her songs are only for those that can appreciate them. She reads quietly inside, away from the yellow pollen and fur of animals that make her eyes water to where she can not even see the pages.

Rodrik Arryn is an old and loyal friend, his children no stranger to court. For his gender Oswin, his younger son, is at least recognized as intelligent if standoffish. Court wonders how a girl sweet and simple as Daella could be charmed by such a homely boy, but surely he has brains enough for the both of them.

For all dragons are exceptional, Daella is no dragon herself, and there is plenty of precedent in the family of such daughters being married off to secure alliances elsewhere. Let Daella know love with her Oswin. They are head over heels for the other. Alysanne was years younger when forced to marry younger than she would have liked for sheer necessity. Why delay their daughter's happiness, Jaehaerys argues, when she is already fifteen and near a woman grown, her groom months older than she.

They weep bitterly as poor Oswin, when a year later Daella rages like a dragon to bring her little girl into the world. For all Oswin begs to one day be buried beside his beloved, Daella is a dragon's daughter. To Dragonstone she returns, her ashes interred beside her elder sister's empty urn. Their urn have been shifted down one, so that Alyssa Velaryon might forever rest beside her daughter.

Saera and Viserra are their youngest girls, spoiled by both parents until Gael comes some years later as an unexpected but most welcome surprise. Alysanne tries to temper them, but the girls are the worst of dragons without the flame, all self-righteous entitlement and prone to playing with the lives around them as cats do mice.

Despite Alysanne's warnings Jaehaerys allows Saera all five companions that bring out the worst in her. When their 'games' result in one lordling dead, another exiled, and one poor girl shamed by her own callous lover their bastard child, Saera is locked up for her part. Her parents are still debating her punishment when she is rushed to the maester with a severely burned hand, for trying to wake her dragon and bully her way back into the right. Only then does Jaehaerys loose his grip on the dragon's temper and order her dragged to the silent sisters. Before Alysanne convinces him to see sense Saera runs away, to never return. Jaehaerys snarls and declares her dead to him, dead to his wife. Alysanne writes to their daughter anyway. She has a temper stubborn as her father's. So long as she remains silent, Alysanne respects her wishes and stays away, no matter the rumors in the east.

If Saera craves the dragon for freedom, then Viserra does for power. Alyssa rolls her eyes with fond exasperation through her sister's blatant questions in how to wake her dragon. One too many attempts to fling herself off the Dragonkeep results in Alysanne arranging exactly what Viserra wants, a marriage of power. House Manderly is among the mightiest in the north and old Lord Theomore a loyal friend. Let Viserra marry his grandson, shrewd Desmond, and rule a trading fleet that rivals Driftmark's.

Before she sets sail for White Harbor, Viserra downs wine with a dragon's thirst and thunders through King's Landing streets upon a stormlander mare. Her life comes to an end from a broken neck. Daella is no longer alone beneath Dragonstone.

So does Gael, her and Jae's unexpected miracle, become her balm. Alysanne had no intention of conceiving after Viserra, but already in her middle age stopped transforming frequently enough to prevent a pregnancy. She is their Winter Child, born in the cold and without a spark to her blood. Alysanne hoards her away as the legendary dragons did whole treasure troves. Beneath her mother's watchful eye Gael wants for nothing, never knows the cold calculation of courtiers or the bitter sting of betrayal.

Until that damned singer. When Gael is seduced by him she and Alysanne retreat for Dragonstone, scarce visited by its prince beneath the Cannibal's shadow. It is there Alysanne holds her daughter's hand and coaxes her through a labor so long she fears to yet again suffer Daella's loss.

Gael's bastard son is stillborn. It takes hours for Alysanne to coax his body from her arms. She promises him a dragon's pyre, for that is all Gael demands of her. It is the first time in well over a year the old queen transforms. Once shifting shape was effortless as breathing. Now she wheezes and snarls curses, straining against an aching hip and wings sore with arthritis. She is still standing vigil over that tiny, tiny pyre when shrill screams make her take to the air.

By the time Gael is pulled forth from the currents, she is cold and will never know it again.

Without waiting for Jae, Alysanne grants their youngest to the flames. She and her nameless son are interred in the same urn, to be together forever. That is all Gael wanted.

Unfurling stiff wings, the Good Queen flies for the last time in her life. She lands at a particular prison off the Vale, upon a desolate isle, where a certain singer has not yet succumbed to consumption. Her first words after her final transformation are to order his execution. His jailers promptly obey. They are loyal men, after all.

Alysanne hobbles home on a ship, eyes dull and faraway. She has used up the last of her sparks on her children, her pride and her joy and her grief. On Dragonstone she sits passionately while those children and grandchildren squabble over the mess Jaehaerys has made of the inheritance, far away from the giggling shades in the Eyrie and the Red Keep.

Here the ghosts are older. Viserys and his tortured wails have long walked her dreams, so has the shriveled form of her father and Visenya's all-encompassing shadow. She welcomes them back gratefully, for they are old friends, and do not have the faces of her children. On Dragonstone Alysanne might squint against her failing eyes and see Gael nursing a cooing babe, imagine a little silver dragon dancing above the Dragonmont and the Cannibal's unerring shadow.

So dies the Good Queen, welcomed back into the arms of those she long strove to leave behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Alyssa Targaryen does not die in childbirth. Her sisters suffer canon fates that have been known for quite a while, but with a few tweaks for personal sanity. Gael and Daella are just quiet and reserved girls that face a lot of shit from court. Daella and Viserra also get more age-appropriate betrotheds that are actually heirs and, you know, serve as better dynastic matches than fat old men that already have two widows and a shit ton of kids each.
> 
> Alysanne also isn't quite as much used up physically, because Aegon isn't conceived due to frequent transformations in her youth, and a couple of her short-lived sons aren't conceived due to her and Jaehaerys being done with kids. Gael was just a whoops.


	10. The Bronze King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of Jaehaerys Targaryen, who can at least be indisputably called the Bronze King, and the end of an era.

Lord Rogar Baratheon marches into King's Landing with an army at his back and a dragon at his head. Jaehaerys is only fourteen. He is dwarfed by the dark dragon still languishing in the Great Hall. What matters is that Jaehaerys is obviously alive, bronze scales flashing in the sun, while the Beast King bloats and rots as a corpse too large to pry from the Iron Throne. The remnants of Maegor's forces fold with minimal bloodshed.

Alyssa, an undisputed queen, sets to purifying the Red Keep. Maegor's corpse is hauled from the throne and burned. Every window is thrown open to fresh air and a hundred septons who cleanse its walls of the Beast King's innumerable sins, so that a new monarch might be anointed upon the very throne he bled out upon.

By the time the hall is ready all uncertainty of that claimant has passed. Rhaena may be the oldest dragon alive, uncrowned Aegon's widow, but wishes only to retreat to Dragonstone. Tainted by Maegor's shadow, not many seek to convince her otherwise. Nor is the claim for Aerea, her eldest twin by Aegon, acknowledged as anything but technicality. She is a little girl, the spawn of incest. Why should the realm rally for a child queen, when Jaehaerys is both near a man grown and a true dragon?

So is crowned King Jaehaerys, first of his name. He does not wear the Valyrian steel of the Conqueror, salvaged from Maegor's pyre alongside Blackfyre when the fires had broken their connection to his natural magics. His crown is yellow gold, adorned only by seven gemstones for the seven gods. Such comes to mark his reign, for his earliest days are marked by reconciliation with the Seven, pardoning what remains of the Warrior's Sons and taking their Faith beneath the crown's protection. They remain too broken by Maegor to protest being taken beneath the dragon's shadow.

The realm that erupted in outrage over Rhaena and Aegon's incestuous match, Maegor's blatant polygamy by seizing seven brides to mock the gods his sired had embraced, scarcely whispers when Jaehaerys weds his sister Alysanne on Dragonstone. They are dragons both, the last two untouched by Maegor's madness. Rogar's furious attempts to annul their marriage are all in vain. He resigns from Hand in disgrace, when his rage over being foiled by his rightful rulers instead drives him to try kidnapping poor, innocent Rhaella in an attempt to crown her as Queen Aerea.

For all the realm knows the crown's protection of their Faith, so must they know dragons are exceptions to the rule. Dragons are born men, but so do they become more. House Targaryen are the last dragons in the world, the last children of Old Valyria, where laws and traditions older than all those in Andalos held sway. So must dragons wed brother to sister, as had been done since the dawn of days, as the gods have made them. There is no other way to guarantee the dragons continue. How can dragons protect the peace of the realm, of the very Faith, if there are none left to defend them?

Jaehaerys and his sister-wife are no beasts like Maegor and his mother, who burned those who displeased them alive. Nor are they like Aegon and Rhaena before them, so absorbed in their blood and callous to the people. Jaehaerys is the Conciliator, wise beyond his years, who buries grudges and lays down laws to stabilize the realm, to bind Seven Kingdoms together so they might forever be one. So does Alysanne quick become the Good Queen, whose almshouses shall serve the poor and desperate forever more, whose earnest reforms shall see no Andal daughter forced out of their inheritance by an overreaching uncle.

Even as a young man Jaehaerys is handsome and dignified, with a beard of silver-gold and eyes of warm bronze. For his scales he is also called the Bronze King. Unlike the dragons before him, marred by war and the cruelty of other dragons, his hide shimmers whole and pristine beside Alysanne's lustrous silver. In their early years the realm comes to know his form intimately, for he flies at the head of every royal progress when Alysanne's pregnancies keep her grounded.

Compared to most, Jaehaerys and Alysanne are fortunate in their brood. Only Daenerys and Viserra do not live to see their majorities. Daenerys alone can be blamed on the Stranger. Viserra has only her own recklessness to blame when she breaks her neck in a wild gallop through the capital's crowded streets. Jaehaerys has always known her and Saera to have shared the same self-destructive tendencies. Their fates are circumstances beyond his control. He could no more tame them than Maegor could the beast in his blood.

Viserra is more trouble in death than she ever was in life, for her internment on Dragonstone is only the beginning of the end.

"Jae," Alysanne murmurs the night after the funeral, as their daughter's urn begins to gather dust. They lay entwined side by side in royal chambers scarce used. Jaehaerys has despised Dragonstone since his youth. Here is where Visenya's poisons withered their father away to nothing. Here is where they where they remained her prisoners until their mother at least took their vengeance. "Jae, I'm tired."

Jaehaerys sighs into the warmth of her neck. "So am I, Aly. So am I." His hand traces the constellation of freckles down her shoulder, much faded from their carefree days frolicking nude on Dragonstone in those first blissful weeks after they found their fire and had tried to drown out the horrors of their father's late reign. "Our Aemon is a man grown now. Perhaps I might permanently declare him my regent, and we might see where the wind takes us."

His queen raises her head away from his. "I am tired of burying my children, Jae. No woman should outlive a child, much less two barely on the cusp of womanhood."

Jaehaerys swallows his own bitter guilt. Perhaps they should have delayed Daella's marriage a year or two. Perhaps, if Daella had been a mature woman in carrying their first grandchild, Aemma would still have a mother and Oswin would not be a grief-stricken wreck without her. "We are still blessed, Aly. We still have six hale children and four grandchildren. Gods know how many great-grandchildren we'll be blessed to see."

Alysanne draws away, silver eyes blazing in the dark. "Seven. Seven are the children left to us."

He bites back his snarl. He is no Maegor, no Visenya, to be so possessed by his bestial side. "The seventh is no longer our concern."

The only intelligence he keeps on _that_ one is to ensure no credible dragon sightings in the area around her. Gods know what bastards she might spawn to challenge the trueborn succession.

Alysanne goes quiet and Jae settles. He believes that the end of it. His sister-wife is not like Rhaena and Visenya, to bury and nurse her grudges so bitterly.

So he believes until she ambushes him in the Red Keep with Septon Barth. Jaehaerys finds himself clenching his teeth as the septon rambles on and on _and on_ about forgiveness, about the healing distance of time and reflection, how death should drive families together and not apart. Still, he remains in control of himself. He is even starting to douse his inner fire when Alysanne dares utter _Saera._

"If it helps you put her to rest, sister, we can inscribe her a proper urn and be done with it," he grits out. "The time has long come to bury her."

Septon Barth's eyes widen, but his response is drowned out by Alysanne's growl. "Saera is my daughter, Jaehaerys, _your_ daughter. She is alive and well, and the time has come to bring her home. _"_

"I hear only the name of a Lysene whore," he hisses. Perhaps their other forms match each other inch for inch, but as a man Jaehaerys looms tall over her.

"She is still your daughter, Jaehaerys, as much as Maegelle and Alyssa. Unless you think _I_ fucked a Lysene whore twenty years ago!"

Jaehaerys tries and tries to reason against her fragile heart and foolish sentimentality, but is bolstered by dragonfire. So are his thoughts drowned out by the roar in his head and his vision by a red haze of fury he has not felt since Rogar wronged their mother so, until the fire is all there is.

The Great Rift begins with the Conciliator and the Good Queen spilling out the Red Keep in fang and fire. No witnesses quite recollect if one chased the other or else tackled them over the balcony. All of King's Landing witnesses dragons of silver and bronze surge out to sea. All of Blackwater Bay hears their thunderous roars, until their three frantic dragon children swoop after them.

That year Jaehaerys makes his royal progress alone. His hosts scrupulously avoid staring at the burn mark that lances across his cheek, rising up beyond what his beard can cover, or the many more scars riddling what had been a pristine bronze hide on all the processions before. Alysanne remains on Dragonstone to grieve their daughters. Still she hosts balls to bring together the families of the bay, flies out to Gulltown to found a new motherhouse especially dedicated to sheltering the city's poor and downtrodden whores. She uses a cane to ease her new limp. In her other form she supports herself heavily on her wings, to avoid straining a mangled leg.

Jaehaerys tarries in his progress for a year. Every court but his is preferable to the resentment festering at home.

When he reaches Oldtown, he is relieved to discover at least one child has not taken their mother's side. Vaegon receives him with his usual distant, apathetic affection. Maegelle is the best of him and Alysanne, his carefulness with her wisdom and patience. She consoles Jaehaerys as no other except Alysanne can.

Until even her patience in him runs out. "Father," she sighs one day, interrupting an entirely different conversation. "Can you please just swallow your pride and apologize already?" She heaves a long-suffering sigh when he instinctively draws himself up with the look that turns the blood of lesser men to ice. "That's the dragon speaking, Father. I want to hear _you."_

The king cannot help his bemused blink. "We are one and the same, daughter. We always have been." Not even a child of his can understand, unless they are a dragon themselves. The temper and the pride, for all he has chained them down, are still his. They have been his for over fifty years, when assassins first gave him no other option to protect his baby sister.

"I know, Father," Maegelle says flatly. "You are as much a dragon as Mother is. But do you despise Saera so much you must despise your own wife too?"

His stomach drops. "I do not despise your mother, Maegelle. She is as much apart of me as your faith is to you, or Baelon to Alyssa. I... simply..."

The words fail him. They do so moons more. He can scarcely choke out any at all, when Rhaenys' wedding looms on the horizon.

His pathetic apology is still enough to drop the tension from Alysanne's faces, as a shadow of her true self appears from behind the cold fury. "There you are, Jae," she murmurs. "I missed you, too."

That night they fly together, free and foolish as they have not been in decades and decades, uncaring of witnesses and disgusted children below.

Jaehaerys still remains heavier built than Alysanne, without her slender grace. His bulk weighs him down but still she matches him wing-beat for wing-beat. No longer does she do so willingly. Her wings do not move as easily as they had a mere three years ago. Yet, for all the years between them, still they match each other inch to inch.

That night the Bronze King's heart soars higher than a dragon ever could. He prays to any and all gods listening he and his queen need never come down ever again.

* * *

What was once known as the Great Rift becomes merely the First Quarrel, when Aemon's sudden death rips out of the heart of his family. His sole heir is Rhaenys, heavy with her first child. In her the realm does not see a dragon; not like her Uncle Baelon, with a warrior's might and bulk of golden bronze. He is near the splitting image of his sire, comfortably familiar in the face of such uncertainty.

Jaehaerys hopes himself wiser than his predecessors, that he has learned from the mistakes of the past. He remembers Rhaena, stranded in siege while carrying her twins. So does he remember Alysanne, who depended on him to be the dragon time and time again as their children grounded her. How can he subject Rhaenys to the same rigors, that she must sacrifice every unborn child if the throne demands a dragon to avenge their people? With her father dead she has no others to rely on, not when Corlys is merely a Sea Serpent, and not a Sea Dragon.

Naming Baelon his heir is mercy, the realm argues, truer to Valyrian precedent than Alysanne's sentimentality.

Chroniclers assure the Second Quarrel was once more eased by Maegelle, that she once more ended the rift between her parents before she too succumbed to her greyscale. Jaehaerys dies beloved, at peace with all his loved ones, leaving behind a legitimate heir and stable succession secured by his Great Council. The Dance of Dragons rests on the shoulders of later grandchildren, weak of heart and unworthy of spirit, to corrupt his legacy so.

There are none left to speak of a septa who could not work miracles, a distraught queen that preferred shades to the prideful beast at home, a king so broken in his last years he passively sat as everyone but himself decided his family's future. The Dance has swallowed them all.

The Wise King dies believing himself at peace, for in Alicent Targaryen he sees Saera returned from across the narrow sea, and all his demons laid to rest.

The tale is sweeter that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a great note to start the next generation off :D
> 
> This series will probably have four parts - the dragons of the Conquest and its aftermath, those in Jaehaerys and Alysanne's long peace, those of the Dance, and then the era you're all actually here for ; )

**Author's Note:**

> Aegon the I is largely a mystery, even with the prequel that goes more in depth on his reign. Keeping his inner thoughts largely a secret works toward that appeal, especially because it establishes some of the ground rules of this 'verse.
> 
> Expect a bit more on this era through the eyes of his sisters ; )


End file.
